People who have no symptoms of COVID-19 are responsible for more than half of all coronavirus transmissions, according to a new study by the United States’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A look at the study:
The study – published on Thursday in the scientific journal JAMA Network Open – analyzed the transmission numbers and found:
- Thirty-five percent of the transmission came from pre-symptomatic individuals.
- Twenty-four percent came from people who never developed symptoms.
- In total, 59% came from people without symptoms.
Experts who conducted the study said that washing hands, wearing a face mask, distancing yourself socially and doing more tests on people who are not sick “will be instrumental in delaying the spread of COVID-19”
Reaction:
Dr. David Hooper, head of the infection control unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, told USA Today that he agreed with the idea.
- “(SARS-CoV-2) is a very transmissible and less forgiving virus with any lapses in wearing masks and social distance and hand hygiene,” he said.
Key to propagation:
Jay C. Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious diseases and co-author of the study, said the key to preventing the virus from spreading requires people to stop transmitting to one another.
- “The bottom line is that controlling the COVID-19 pandemic will really require controlling the silent pandemic for transmitting people without symptoms,” he said. “The community mitigation tools we have need to be widely used to be able to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to all infected people, at least until we have these vaccines widely available.”