For weeks, government officials and physicians have warned the public to be aware of a dry cough and a temperature above 100 degrees as key symptoms for the coronavirus.

But hospitals around the country are beginning to see a new symptom appear: stomach pain. Michael Hirsh, Worcester’s director of public health, said the city’s hospitals are now seeing patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and are displaying only abdominal pain.

“What we’ve been seeing is patients coming in not so much with complaints about respiratory stuff but with abdominal stuff,” Hirsh said.

The pain in the stomach is a result of a patient developing pneumonia in the lower lobes of the lungs, Hirsh said. If the lobes are inflamed frequently, the irritation in the diaphragm causes pain in the abdomen.

“The more we see the disease, we’re going to see manifestations of the disease that don’t fit that classic picture of dry hacking cough and fever,” Hirsh said. “We’re going to see other manifestations of it.”

Hirsh said many of the patients with abdominal pain haven’t had any respiratory symptoms. While there’s not enough data available yet, Hirsh said at this time younger patients reported the stomach pain, while older patients showed respiratory symptoms.

Of the 2,417 coronavirus cases in Massachusetts, 437 are people between the ages of 50 and 59 — the highest age group affected by the outbreak. The second highest age group is 30 to 39, with 433 confirmed cases, and the third highest age group is 20 to 29, with 425 confirmed cases, according to the Department of Public Health.

The United States now has the highest number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the world. Doctors continue to study the virus as it spreads by the thousands each day.

One symptom doctors discovered as an early symptom of the virus is a loss of smell.

Like stomach pain, loss of smell is a new symptom and the medical community continues to wait on more data.

“Symptoms that you’d see, nausea, diarrhea and fever, at this point I would warn the public, they shouldn’t write off those symptoms just the routine springtime gastroenteritis or flu,” Hirsh said.

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