A recent article published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases estimates that around 30.8% of infected people are asymptomatic.
A significant percentage of the population will be asymptomatic, says also Marc Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Also, Dr. Deborah Birx, the US administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, considers that people under the age of 20 don’t have “significant symptoms”. “Are they a group that are potentially asymptomatic and spreading the virus?” she asked.
Dr. Sandra Ciesek, director of the Institute of Medical Virology in Frankfurt, Germany, tested 24 passengers who had just flown in from Israel.
Seven of the 24 passengers tested positive for coronavirus. Four of those had no symptoms, and Ciesek was surprised to find that the viral load of the specimens from the asymptomatic patients was higher than the viral load of the specimens from the three patients who did have symptoms.
Viral load is a measure of the concentration of the virus in someone’s respiratory secretions. A higher load means that someone is more likely to spread the infection to other people.
Sources: https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30139-9/fulltext
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/14/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-spread/index.html
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