The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Robert Redfield recently said it’s possible up to 25 percent of people infected with COVID-19 show absolutely no symptoms.
A new report from the CDC tracking commission points out these people may unknowingly be infecting others, because the virus may be contagious 3 days before showing any signs.
Redfield talked about the new findings:
This virus does have the ability to transmit far easier than flu. It’s probably now about three times as infectious as flu. One of the [pieces of] information that we have pretty much confirmed now is that a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic. That may be as many as 25 percent.
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.
Dr. David Agus took the time to discuss facemasks on CBS This Morning:
Experts are split on whether wearing a face mask may help prevent such a wide spreading of the virus. Up to this point, general recommendations were for sick people to wear a mask, but this study would suggest otherwise. Redfield was asked about this specifically and said:
… you can look at masks in two ways … Is the mask something that protects me or … if I wear a mask, is it something that protects others, from me? I can tell you that the data and this issue of whether it’s going to contribute [to prevention] is being aggressively reviewed as we speak.
The majority of people generally don’t want to wear a mask, but if it’s going to help prevention when going to the store into town, it may be best for people to just choose for themselves regardless of what the CDC recommends. Especially when they are predicting if the virus does go away, it will return in the fall.
According to Redfield, the CDC is preparing “most likely, for another wave that we would anticipate in the late fall, early winter where there will still be a substantial portion of Americans that are susceptible.”
Not everyone thinks there will for sure be a second wave of the virus.
Alarmingly, this estimate of 25% asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers is based on a small data subset of 157 people infected by presymptomatic cases in Singapore. Much more in depth global analyses performed by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which shows that up to 50% of people may be asymptomatic spreaders of COVID-19 infection, puts the analyses in question and brings up a question of whether or not it is reliable enough.
Newsweek recently spoke to Dr. Benjamin Linas who is an Infectious Diseases Physician at Boston Medical Center. He stressed social distancing as a preventative measure and said:
This virus will be with us until we discover a vaccine. However, that does not mean that we must have a second wave of infection. Containment includes very wide-scale testing and aggressive contact tracing and isolation for exposed persons. We must be developing that infrastructure now so that we do not suffer a second wave of infections.
Whether or not that can be done in time, we will have to wait and see. At the current rate, who knows if it will ever truly be contained by the time fall comes. The best-case scenario would be if scientists discover a vaccine in time that people could take before the fall rolls around, like the one developed at the University of Pittsburgh. Time will tell, until then, unfortunately, the best thing to do is distancing yourself from others, and why not buy a mask if it will help.
