The rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1] is enabling researchers worldwide to acquire a large amount of clinical data regarding coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The serious health emergency situation makes data collection and analysis very difficult, but some important clinical differences are starting to emerge between Chinese and European case series.

Particularly, smell and taste dysfunctions have been reported as uncommon by Chinese colleagues, during COVID-19 infection. In the only paper present in literature, Mao et al. [2], analyzing neurological manifestation frequency in 214 infected patients, found out anosmia in 11 (5.1%) and ageusia in 12 (5.6%) cases.

In contrast to these data, the firsts European case series [3-6] are detecting a very high frequency of chemosensitive disorders in COVID-19 patients, ranging between 19.4% and 88%. In particular, the olfactory and gustative alterations seem especially frequent in the initial stages of the infection and in paucisymptomatic patients [3-5]. These complaints could represent, therefore, pivotal symptoms suspecting SARS-CoV-2 infection [3].

However, all the studies published up to now are anamnestic-observational, presenting the limitation of not reporting any systematic sensitive evaluation of the patients. The objective assessment is fundamental, quantifying the extent of the dysfunction and monitoring the recovery over time.

The purpose of this study is to objectively evaluate the gustatory and olfactory function, through the use of psycho-physiological objective tests, in COVID-19 patients treated in the University Hospital of Sassari.