Asymptomatic infection blunder let Covid-19 spin out of control
“Today, the best evidence suggests that about half of Covid-19 cases are caused by infected people who do not have symptoms when they pass on the virus.”
Asymptomatic infection blunder let Covid-19 spin out of control
Daniel P. Oran and Eric J. Topol writing for STAT.
At least one of three people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, do not develop symptoms. That’s the conclusion of a review we just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It summarizes the results of 61 studies with more than 1.8 million people.
… But during much of the pandemic, fierce resistance — and even outright denialism — in acknowledging this not-so-typical disease pattern led to ineffective testing practices that allowed the pandemic to spin out of control.
In June, when we published a report of 16 cohorts with sizable proportions of asymptomatic infection and suggested that it might play a role in the progression of the pandemic, several researchers wrote letters to the editor demanding that our paper be retracted.
Today, the best evidence suggests that about half of Covid-19 cases are caused by infected people who do not have symptoms when they pass on the virus. These symptom-free spreaders are roughly divided between those who later develop symptoms, known as pre-symptomatic individuals, and those who never develop symptoms.
While the importance of asymptomatic infection in understanding Covid-19 has been surprising to some, infectious disease experts have long known that infection without symptoms is common in many illnesses. More than 90% of people infected with poliovirus have no symptoms. And about 75% of influenza infections have been estimated to be asymptomatic. Yet these important precedents have largely been ignored.
Asymptomatic coronavirus infection is not necessarily benign. Several studies have reported abnormal lung scans in those infected without symptoms, as well as myocarditis, a type of heart inflammation. The long-term health implications of asymptomatic infection aren’t known.
Even though knowledge about asymptomatic infection has greatly evolved, tactics for combating the pandemic have not. It is now obvious that testing only those with symptoms, as was common early in the pandemic, is a mistake because it ignores the invisible legions of infected people who have no symptoms.