From a purely anecdotal perspective, my experience was that COVID eliminated my sense of taste, and left my sense of very hot food unchanged as far as could be noticed. The result was a very unpleasant meal.

nope. i had covid and lost my sense of smell/taste.

i had a bottle of last dab and tried to see if the "heat" feeling also went away -- i can 100% tell you that not only it did not, but it actually felt worse because i could not taste the sauce, only the heat.

To add to the sibling comments. My first hint at getting COVID was that my local takeaway curry didn't taste of anything, but the usual fiery heat was still there. I almost phoned up the shop to have a moan about them sending out this tasteless dish but realised that I might have gotten the plague. I took a rapid test and lo and behold I was positive for COVID. It took me weeks to get my sense of taste back again.