The newest COVID variants circulating in 2025 cause the same core symptoms as previous Omicron subvariants. There is no evidence that the dominant strains, including XEC and its offshoots, produce different symptoms or more severe illness than the variants that preceded them. What has changed over time is the relative frequency of certain symptoms, particularly loss of taste and smell, which is far less common now than it was in 2020 and 2021.
The Most Common Symptoms
The CDC lists the following as current COVID symptoms: cough, congestion or runny nose, fever or chills, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and loss of taste or smell. Beyond that official list, sore throat, headache, fatigue, and body aches remain widely reported. Most people describe the experience as feeling like a bad cold or mild flu, which is consistent with how Omicron subvariants have generally presented since 2022.
About a third of people with COVID present with only gastrointestinal symptoms, at least initially, without any cough or congestion at all. The most common gut symptoms are diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. This matters because it’s easy to assume you have food poisoning or a stomach bug when COVID is actually the cause, especially if you never develop a cough.
Loss of taste and smell was the hallmark symptom early in the pandemic, reported by roughly 20 to 40 percent of people who tested positive. With current variants, it still occurs but is significantly less frequent. If you do lose your sense of smell, COVID remains a likely explanation, but most people with today’s strains won’t experience it.
How Symptoms Differ in Children
Fever and cough are the most common symptoms in children, just as in adults. Kids are also prone to sore throat, runny nose, headache, fatigue, and stomach symptoms like nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. The challenge with children is that these symptoms overlap almost entirely with other common childhood infections, making it difficult to distinguish COVID from a regular cold or flu without testing.
One finding worth noting: despite the general perception that Omicron variants are milder, children under 5 who are hospitalized with COVID have a similar risk of severe outcomes as they did during the Delta and pre-Delta eras. About 20 to 21 percent of hospitalized children in that age group required ICU care across all variant periods, and the need for oxygen support and the typical two-day hospital stay didn’t change significantly either. This doesn’t mean young children are more likely to be hospitalized overall, but it does mean that when a young child gets sick enough to need hospital care, the severity hasn’t meaningfully decreased with newer variants.
How Long Symptoms Typically Last
Most people recover in five to ten days. The first two to three days tend to be the worst, with fever, body aches, and fatigue peaking early. Cough and congestion often linger toward the end of that window or slightly beyond. If your symptoms are getting worse after a week rather than better, that’s a signal to seek medical evaluation, particularly if you’re experiencing worsening shortness of breath.
Some people develop post-COVID symptoms that persist beyond the acute phase. Children appear to be affected by long COVID less frequently than adults, though it does still occur in younger age groups.
When Rapid Tests Are Most Accurate
Home rapid antigen tests still work for current variants, but their accuracy depends heavily on your timing. When you have symptoms, sensitivity is around 56 percent compared to PCR testing. On days you have a fever specifically, that jumps to 77 percent. On days when you have no symptoms at all, sensitivity drops to just 18 percent.
This means a negative rapid test on your first day of sniffles doesn’t rule COVID out. If you test negative but have symptoms, test again in 24 to 48 hours, ideally on a day when your symptoms are more pronounced. A positive result is reliable. A negative result early in illness is not.
How Well Current Vaccines Protect
The 2024-2025 updated COVID vaccine provides meaningful protection against emergency department and urgent care visits. In children aged 9 months to 4 years, vaccine effectiveness was estimated at 76 percent during the first six months after vaccination. In children and adolescents aged 5 to 17, effectiveness was estimated at 56 percent over the same period. These numbers reflect protection against visits serious enough to require emergency or urgent care, not just mild infections, which makes them a useful measure of the vaccine’s ability to prevent the outcomes that matter most.
Protection against mild, at-home illness is generally lower than protection against severe outcomes. This has been consistent across every COVID vaccine formulation: vaccines reduce your odds of getting seriously ill by a greater margin than they reduce your odds of catching the virus at all.