More than half of coronavirus cases are transmitted by people without symptoms of the virus, according to a new model from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In this basic case, 59% of all transmission came from asymptomatic transmission, comprising 35% of pre-symptomatic individuals and 24% of individuals who never developed symptoms”, the model says.
Pre-symptomatic individuals are those who showed symptoms of the virus, but were asymptomatic and infectious before their symptoms developed.
The authors concluded “that the identification and isolation of people with symptomatic COVID-19 alone will not control the continued spread of SARS-CoV-2. “
According to the model, which was posted on the JAMA Network on Thursday, to slow down the spread of the virus, there needs to be more focus on people who have no symptoms.
“These findings suggest that measures such as wearing masks, hand hygiene, social detachment and strategic testing of people who are not sick will be instrumental in slowing the spread of COVID-19 until safe and effective vaccines are available and widely used,” authors said.
Vaccines are being launched in the United States at a slower pace than anticipated. President-elect Joe Biden
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“The bottom line is that controlling the COVID-19 pandemic will really require controlling the silent transmission pandemic of people without symptoms,” Jay Butler, CDC deputy director for infectious diseases and co-author of the study, told The Washington Post. “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.”