In the morning I had no doubts: although in the absence of evidence that hydroxychloroquine may affect outcomes in such an early stage of the infection, I decided to start it according to the dosage suggested by Yao and coll. in a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases<\/em> on March 9 (Fig.1). The onset of nausea and two vomiting episodes characterized the first part of the day. The temperature, however, never reached its initial peak nor crossed 37.7 \u00b0C even during the following day, when I start getting infrequent dry cough and diarrhoea. Although I already felt much better than the previous day, I was beginning to realize that I had lost both smell and sense of taste, a quite odd sensation in the absence of a stuffy nose.<\/p>\n While the anosmia was complete (to the point of not perceiving the smell of perfume), the sense of taste was not completely abolished; I therefore prefer to name it dysgeusia rather than ageusia: indeed, I could perceive saltiness and sourness, but no trace of the sweet and bitter, let alone the umami … I have not got any improvement as yet, but according to Claire Hopkins, president of the British Rhinological Society<\/em>, who is collecting data from patients with anosmia in several countries, I should be able to recover within 2 weeks after the onset (hopefully!).<\/p>\n Driven by my experience and the circumstances that we are all experiencing, I decided to promote an anonymous survey, in a concrete attempt to describe the situation of Italian health workers (doctors, nurses and socio-health workers) who are facing the COVID19 emergency.<\/p>\n I would be honoured to receive your contribution and infinitely grateful if you could help spreading the link to join the survey:<\/p>\n
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