KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 – Recent findings from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have indicated that at least 25 per cent of those infected with the Covid-19 virus will not likely show any symptoms of even fall ill.
They can however, still transmit the virus to other people.
Robert Redfield, a director at the CDC told NPR, said that these asymptomatic carriers are likely to have been contributing to the rapid global spread of Covid-19.
“There’s significant transmission by people who are not showing symptoms,” said Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist of Columbia University, “We don’t know all the unidentified cases out there. It’s mostly sicker people in hospitals who are being tabulated.”
Redfield said that “it appears that we’re shedding significant virus” about 48 hours before symptoms appear.”
“A significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic.”
“This helps explain how rapidly this virus continues to spread across the country, because we have asymptomatic transmitters and we have individuals who are transmitting 48 hours before they become symptomatic.”
One third of the world’s population is currently under some form of restricted movement or lock down. The total number of confirmed cases worldwide has passed 1 million people.
In February, the World Health Organisation published a report from the outbreak in China that indicated that there were individuals who were found to be positive but did not show any symptoms.
However, this study also found that around 75 per cent of individuals who were asymptomatic at the point of diagnosis later developed symptoms.
