But for about one in five of those who were once infected [by Covid] — an estimated 37 million people in the U.S. like Burger — that loss or change of smell lingers. There are ways to regain it through daily training, but it is tedious and takes a long time and it is tough for people to stick with it.

But little shocks to a nerve in the face may help. The Medical University of South Carolina has a clinical trial to find out if and how it works.

— Read more in COVID stole your sense of smell. These little shocks at MUSC might help bring it back at The Post and Courier.

In a study published in Science Advances, researchers explored an alternative strategy that sidesteps the damaged olfactory system entirely. Instead of trying to restore smell itself, they focused on preserving what smell provides: information about the chemical environment around us. In other words, they asked whether perception could be rebuilt by disentangling how odors are detected from how they are experienced.

— Read more in When smell is lost, our sense of touch may replace it at New Atlas.

They ran smell tests on 2,956 volunteers with a history of COVID-19 infections and 569 who hadn't caught the virus. On average, the smell testing took place 671 days after participants had first been tested for COVID-19.

Of the COVID-19 group, 1,393 thought they had issues with smell, and tests confirmed about 80 percent of them did. Surprisingly, the other 1,563 people in that group didn't report any smell problems, but test results showed 66 percent of them had hyposmia or anosmia after their COVID-19 infections.

— Read more in Millions of Us Have Likely Lost Our Smell Without Even Realizing It at Science Alert.