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“I said, ‘We need to come up with a test,’ Small says. “So we started brainstorming.”

Identifying asymptomatic carriers is absolutely critical

What makes COVID-19 especially deadly isn’t the fact that it hangs around on surfaces for a spell, but its prolific transmission rates. It is a 21st century virus that gets around, and a good chunk of its carriers are asymptomatic, meaning they don’t experience a fever, cough – or have difficulty breathing — and instead float through life blissfully oblivious to the risk they pose to others.

“Identifying asymptomatic carriers is absolutely critical in stopping the progression of the pandemic, I believe,” Small says. “So if there is odour loss with some — even if it’s only a small percentage of people — identifying them as carriers would be significant.”

Losing one’s sense of smell isn’t like losing one’s car keys. When the keys go missing, you recognize the loss in an instant. But a person’s sense of smell can slip away quietly, over a period of time, without the person noticing it is going, going, going, until it is effectively gone.

Small and her pals agreed that a simple do-it-at-home sniff test, using common household items, would allow participants — the great mass of us — to start tracking their sense of smell. In this way, an asymptomatic carrier who feels like a million bucks, but notes a diminishing sense of smell one day to the next, could consider quarantining, ASAP, instead of carrying on until their olfactory sense disappears altogether.