What are the Covid-19 symptoms for people who are fully vaccinated?

People who have received two doses of a Covid vaccine are less likely to be fall seriously ill or die from the virus, but they may still feel unwell if they become infected.

The symptoms commonly associated with coronavirus are a high temperature, continuous cough and loss or change to your sense of smell or taste.

But a symptom study conducted by health science company Zoe, using analysis provided by King’s College London and contributions from more than 4 million people globally, found there were some subtle differences in how people experienced the virus after receiving one or both jabs.

“Generally, we saw similar symptoms of Covid-19 being reported overall in the app by people who had and hadn’t been vaccinated,” the researchers said.

“However, fewer symptoms were reported over a shorter period of time by those who had already had a jab, suggesting that they were falling less seriously ill and getting better more quickly.”

The top four symptoms reported by contributors to the Zoe Covid Symptom Study were a headache, runny nose, sneezing and a sore throat – all of which are features of a common cold.

BBC presenter Andrew Marr said he recently suffered a “nasty” bout of Covid-19 despite having already received both vaccine doses – describing it as “really, really quite unpleasant” with symptoms similar to that of a summer cold.

According to the latest Zoe Covid Symptom Study report published in late June, for the fully vaccinated, the “previous ‘traditional’ symptoms as still outlined on the government website, such as anosmia (loss of smell), shortness of breath and fever rank way down the list, at 11, 29 and 12 respectively”.

The researchers reported that a persistent cough ranked at number eight for those who have had two vaccine doses, meaning it is no longer the top indicator of having Covid.

“Curiously, we noticed that people who had been vaccinated and then tested positive for Covid-19 were more likely to report sneezing as a symptom compared with those without a jab,” they wrote.

Top reported symptoms for those who had only one vaccine dose were also a headache, runny nose, sore throat and sneezing – but a cough climbed the ranking and was in fifth place in terms of most common complaints.

For the unvaccinated, the symptom list included headache, sore throat, runny nose, fever and persistent cough, in that order.

“Loss of smell comes in at number nine and shortness of breath comes far down the list at number 30 [for the unvaccinated], indicating the symptoms as recorded previously are changing with the evolving variants of the virus,” the Zoe summary said.