Why are some people with coronavirus asymptomatic — and are they as contagious as those who display symptoms?

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How contagious is someone who has contracted COVID-19 — yet displays no symptoms? Their viral load is similar to that in symptomatic patients, researchers found.

This study, published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine this week, provides one theory for the first question. It isolated 303 patients with COVID-19 in a treatment center in South Korea. Of those, 110 were asymptomatic and 21 developed symptoms during isolation.

“ ‘Many individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection remained asymptomatic for a prolonged period, and viral load was similar to that in symptomatic patients.’ ” The infectiousness of asymptomatic individuals relative to those who are symptomatic is 75%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on studies of “viral shedding” dynamics — that is, how much of the virus they transmit through talking or breathing.

Previous exposure to other coronaviruses, which can give people “T-cell immunity” to similar viruses, receiving a lower viral load of COVID-19 and other lucky genetic variations may also contribute to why some people having less severe or not symptoms to infection. Doctors today attribute that to the “cytokine storm,” a process where the immune system in healthy people reacts so strongly as to hurt the body and ultimately cause damage to the organs and, in the most severe cases, organ failure.

It doesn’t matter if someone appears sick or not. Asymptomatic transmission “is the Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control through the public-health strategies,” according to a May 28 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. It said the SARS-CoV-1 is even more contagious than SARS-CoV-2.

 

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Wow a virus so deadly you don't even know you had it? 😃 0.32% death rate. Guess the average age?

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