Geneva: The spread of COVID-19 from people who have no symptoms appears to be “very rare,” the World Health Organization said Monday.
Research shows that many patients, particularly young and otherwise healthy people, may carry the virus but have no symptoms or very mild symptoms, said Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, at a news briefing from Geneva, Switzerland.
“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Van Kerkhove said. “A number of countries are not finding secondary transmission. It’s very rare.”
Patients who carry the virus but have no symptoms, or very mild symptoms, have been identified through contact tracing, Van Kerkhove said.
She acknowledged that a study of cases in Singapore showed that outbreaks appeared to spread from asymptomatic patients in clusters found in long-term facilities and in family units.
“We’re trying to get more information from countries to answer this question,” she said.
“What we really want to be focused on is following the symptomatic cases,” Van Kerkhove added. “If we actually followed all of the symptomatic cases, isolated those cases, followed the contacts and quarantined those contacts, we would drastically reduce the outbreak.”
