In 2023, COVID-19 most often looked like a bad cold or flu, but it could still be serious, especially for high‑risk people.

Core symptoms in 2023

Most common symptoms reported in 2023 were:

  • Fever or chills
  • Cough (often dry), sometimes shortness of breath
  • Sore throat
  • Runny or blocked nose
  • Headache
  • Fatigue (feeling very tired)
  • Muscle or body aches
  • New loss or change in taste or smell
  • Nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea
  • Loss of appetite

Health agencies like CDC, NHS, and major medical sites all listed very similar symptom sets during 2023.

How it changed by 2023

By 2023, with Omicron-lineage variants circulating, the pattern shifted:

  • More people had “cold‑like” illness: sore throat, congestion, runny nose, headache.
  • Classic early‑pandemic signs (sudden loss of smell, severe shortness of breath) became less common, but still occurred.
  • Symptoms were often milder and shorter in vaccinated people, but older adults and those with underlying conditions could still get very sick.

Public health updates in 2023 emphasized that COVID symptoms overlapped heavily with flu and other respiratory viruses, so testing was recommended if you were unsure.

Red‑flag / emergency symptoms

Seek urgent medical care or emergency help if you notice:

  • Trouble breathing or feeling like you cannot get enough air
  • Persistent chest pain or pressure
  • New confusion or difficulty waking or staying awake
  • Blue, pale, or gray lips, face, or nail beds

These warning signs were flagged consistently as emergency symptoms in COVID‑19 guidance.

What to do if you have symptoms

In 2023, typical recommendations included:

  1. Test for COVID-19 (rapid antigen or PCR), especially if you had close contact with a case or are high‑risk.
  2. Isolate while symptomatic or until you met local guidance for ending isolation.
  3. Call a clinician if symptoms were worsening or you were high‑risk (older age, chronic disease, pregnancy, weak immune system) to ask about antivirals.

If your symptoms feel “just like a bad cold” but you’ve had a recent exposure, it was still considered wise in 2023 to test and act as if it might be COVID until you knew for sure.

TL;DR: In 2023, “what are COVID symptoms” was basically “what are flu‑ or cold‑like symptoms” (fever, cough, sore throat, congestion, headache, fatigue, body aches, sometimes stomach issues or loss of smell), with the key difference that testing and isolation were still important and emergency breathing or chest symptoms needed urgent care.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.