Anosmia: how Covid brought loss of smell centre stage

A condition once overlooked by researchers is now in the spotlight as a key symptom of Covid-19

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Seven years ago, rhinology surgeon Peter Andrews found himself performing an operation that would go on to change the course of his career.

Andrews was operating on a patient who had broken his nose many decades earlier after being struck by a cricket ball. The procedure was delicate: straightening the septum - the thin wall of cartilage that separates the nostrils - and in the process improving his breathing, which had become more laboured in later life.