Table I.

Comparison of anosmia prevalence in previous pandemics^a

Pandemic	Years	Virus	Variant	Anosmia (%)	Refs for anosmia prevalence
Pandemic of 1889	1889–1892	Corona?		<1%	[4]
Pandemic of 1918	1918–1920	Influenza		Not common	[3]b
SARS	2002	SARS-CoV-1		<0.1%	[5,6]
HCoV-NL63	2004	Corona		No reports found	N/A
MERS	2012	Corona		Not listed	[7]
COVID-19	2019–2020	SARS-CoV-2	D614	~10%	[37,38]
	2020–2021		G614	30–50%	[37,38,105]
	2021–?		Omicron	~13%	[105,107,109]

^aAbbreviations: D614, original SARS-CoV-2 (Wuhan) strain with an A nucleotide at position 614 of the spike; G614, SARS-CoV-2 variant with a G nucleotide at position 614 of the spike; MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome; N/A, not applicable.

^bD.A. Pettit, PhD thesis, University of New Hampshire, 1976 (https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1145/).