WHO: Most people with asymptomatic COVID-19 are not contagious

Representatives of the World Health Organization said that patients with coronavirus without symptoms do not contribute to the spread of the virus. This has cast doubt on the fears of some researchers that the disease can be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic distributors. Writes about it CNBC.

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In some people, especially young and healthy people infected with coronavirus, the symptoms never develop or only develop in a mild form. In others, symptoms may not appear at all.

Preliminary data on the earliest outbreaks showed that the virus can be transmitted from person to person, even if the carrier did not have symptoms. But WHO officials now say that although asymptomatic distribution does occur, it is not the primary mode of transmission of coronavirus.

“Based on the data we have, it is rare to find a person with asymptomatic disease,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, told a U.N. briefing.

The government’s response should be to identify and isolate infected people with symptoms and to track everyone who might come in contact with them, Van Kerchove said. She acknowledged that some studies indicate an asymptomatic distribution in nursing homes and at home.

Van Kerkhov added that for a “true answer” to the question of whether coronavirus can spread widely through asymptomatic carriers, more research and data are needed.

“We have a number of reports from countries that are doing very detailed contact tracing,” she said. “They follow asymptomatic cases. They keep track of contacts. And they don't find secondary transmission. This happens very rarely".

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If asymptomatic spread is not the main factor in coronavirus transmission, the policy implications can be enormous. A report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), published April 1, indicated that “asymptomatic transmission potential” is the reason for the importance of social distance.

“These data also suggest that limiting exposure to symptomatic individuals may not be sufficient to control the pandemic because asymptomatic individuals may still transmit the infection,” the CDC study said.

Of course, the asymptomatic spread of the virus seems to still be taking place, Van Kerchove said, but this is a rare occurrence. This conclusion is important for how to track the virus and limit its spread.

“We really want to focus on symptomatic cases,” Van Kerkhove said. “If we actually followed up on all symptomatic cases, isolated those cases, followed up contacts and isolated those contacts, we would have reduced the outbreak dramatically.”

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