The symptoms of a common cold include fever, cough, headache, runny nose, etc. It usually improves gradually after about a week, and pneumonia is less common. SARS patients usually have fever (body temperature above 38 degrees Celsius) as the primary symptom, mostly high fever, which can be accompanied by chills or other symptoms, such as headache, systemic pain and discomfort, fatigue, and some patients may also experience mild respiratory symptoms in the early stages, such as cough, sore throat, etc. 2-3 days after onset, patients may experience dry cough, reduced sputum production, difficulty breathing, and in some cases, acute respiratory distress syndrome. When patients with a common cold have a fever, their white blood cells will increase, while when patients with SARS have a fever, their white blood cells will be normal or decrease.
The difference from pneumonia is that generally pneumonia first presents with severe clinical manifestations, and then shadow changes in the lungs can be seen on chest X-rays; But SARS is when the clinical symptoms are not severe, and X-rays already show flocculent shadows in the patient’s lungs, showing a rapid development trend. In addition, antibiotics have a significant therapeutic effect on patients with pneumonia and high fever, while antibiotics are mostly ineffective in treating SARS patients.
