Considering the increasing numbers of Coronavirus cases all the countries have been strengthened safety measures. While people are asked to monitor their health and check for any symptoms related to the COVID-19, Chinese doctors noticed that two out of three people who tested positive for the disease had no typical signs of COVID-19.
This new finding is believed to help the researchers to understand the Novel coronavirus more deeply and at the same time, it showed challenges of identifying infections as well as containing the spread of the virus.
New Coronavirus infection cases
China's National Health Commission has revealed that out of 181 cases, 115 did not show symptoms like fever and cough. The tests were conducted in the 48 hours through midnight Thursday, April 2. On Friday, the agency stated that as of now it has recorded 1,027 asymptomatic individuals under medical observation, among them 221 people have travelled from other countries.
While the Coronavirus pandemic has infected over a million people and killed more than 50,000 individuals in all around the world, international researchers are finding a wider range of manifestations than previously recognized which include loss of smell and taste, unusual neurological symptoms in a small number of cases, mentioned Mady Hornig, a physician-scientist at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York.
She said, "When you first have an outbreak or any disease and if it hasn't been identified before, you have a process of creating a case definition." Hornig explained that this process can lead to the identification of additional features of the virus. However, this new finding indicates that more people have the need to be tested to identify cases with atypical symptoms.
Director-general of WHO Tedros Adhanom urged not to overlook what he says is the backbone of the response to Novel Coronavirus which includes testing, isolation and contact tracing. He said these things are very important to prevent further infections and break the chains of transmission. During a briefing in Geneva, he said, "You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don't know who is infected," adding that "We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case."
What are asymptomatic cases and who are the silent carriers?
When it comes to asymptomatic cases, it means that people who test positive for the deadly virus without displaying usual Coronavirus symptoms but some of those individuals will develop symptoms over a 14-day period while others will remain symptom-free.
Here it should be mentioned that the possibility of so-called presymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 causes challenging situation in terms of disease control said researchers from Singapore, where recently seven cases were registered where the COVID-19 probably spread in that way.
In countries like Iceland and South Korea, researchers identified people infected by the Novel Coronavirus without discernible symptoms. As per the scientists, it is possible that the number of silent carriers is greater than recorded. Chinese province Hubei, the initial epicentre of the Coronavirus outbreak reported 51 asymptomatic cases on April 2. This revelation triggered one question- Whether the outbreak in China was really contained or not? However, after the outrage, China started publicizing the number of confirmed symptom-less cases this week.
