WHO Holds Q&A About Asymptomatic Transmission Comments
Written by Site Hub on June 10, 2020
The WHO is attempting to effectively communicate how often people can spread the coronavirus when they are asymptomatic.
On Tuesday, they held a social media based live Q&A to answer questions about comments made by a WHO representative, indicating that asymptomatic people rarely spread the virus.
There’s been a lot of confusion lately because that information contradicts information from the CDC and other public health organizations. They have published data saying that 40% of coronavirus transmission happens before people feel sick, or “pre-symptomatic.”
During the Q&A, WHO’s technical lead for coronavirus response and head of its emerging diseases and zoonoses unit Maria Van Kerkhove said that although it is rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual, it is still a major unknown.
She is quoted saying: “The majority of transmission that we know about is that people who have symptoms transmit the virus to other people through infectious droplets — but there are a subset of people who don’t develop symptoms, and to truly understand how many people don’t have symptoms, we don’t actually have that answered yet.”
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