“It can make the itching worse and can spread the infection to other people if it's in your tears,” says Grayson Armstrong, M.D., M.P.H., director of ophthalmology emergency service at Mass Eye and Ear How to treat itchy eyes due to Omicronįirst, resist the urge to rub your eyes. Adalja says you can assume that you’re infected with the Omicron variant, which now causes 99.5% of all COVID-19 cases in the U.S., according to CDC data. Itchy eyes due to COVID is “unlikely to occur in isolation,” he says.īut, if you happen to have a cough, congestion, and/or runny nose with your itchy eyes, it’s definitely worth taking a COVID-19 test to try to see what’s going on. Adalja says it’s more likely that it’s caused by something other than COVID-19. If you just develop itchy eyes and nothing else, Dr. What should you do if you develop itchy eyes? It’s unclear whether it’s more or less common with Omicron but “as far as we know right now, this is not common,” Dr. For example, one study published in The New England Journal of Medicine analyzed the symptoms of 1,000 people with COVID-19 and found that less than 1% had pink eye. Pink eye has never been a common symptom of COVID-19 in the past. “With any virus, the body’s response is inflammation, which can cause redness and itching of the eyes,” she says. Movsisyan says it makes sense that Omicron could impact the eyes and lead to symptoms like redness, irritation, and itching. Tatevik Movsisyan, O.D., chief of Advanced Ocular Care Service at The Ohio State University College of Optometry, points out that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, “is a virus that seems to affect many systems.”īecause of that, Dr. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Many respiratory viruses can also impact the conjunctiva of the eye,” says infectious disease expert Amesh A. It can cause symptoms like eye redness, itchiness, tearing, and discharge, per the American Academy of Ophthalmology.)Īnd, with that, experts say it’s entirely possible that Omicron is also causing itchy eyes in some people. (Pink eye, in case you’re not familiar with it, is an infection of the conjunctiva or transparent membrane that lines your eyelid and covers the white part of your eye. There has been some research to suggest that previous strains of COVID-19 have caused conjunctivitis, aka pink eye, in some people. And, because of that, there isn’t a lot of research on how this variant affects people and the symptoms it causes. It’s important to note that the Omicron variant is still a new strain of COVID-19-it was only identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a variant of concern on November 26, 2021. That report analyzed data from 43 cases of COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant and found that most people had these symptoms:
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