Coronavirus: many infections spread by people yet to show symptoms - scientists [View all]

[pat_k]

Source: The Guardian

Coronavirus: many infections spread by people yet to show symptoms (est: 45% to 85%)

An analysis of infections in Singapore and Tianjin in China revealed that two-thirds and three-quarters of people respectively appear to have caught it from others who were incubating the virus but still symptom-free.

Researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands drew on data from outbreaks in Singapore and Tianjin to work out the "generation interval" for Covid-19. The generation interval is the time between one person getting infected and them infecting another. The figure is valuable for estimating the speed at which an outbreak will unfold.

The mean generation interval was 5.2 days in the Singapore cluster and 3.95 days in the China cluster, according to the analysis which is under review at an infectious disease journal. The scientists went on to calculate what proportion of infections were likely spread from people who were still incubating the virus and had yet to develop symptoms.

There are uncertainties in the figures because the scientists did not have precise information on who infected whom in the two clusters of disease. But even the lowest estimates show there was substantial transmission of coronavirus from people who had yet to fall ill.

In the Singapore cluster, between 45% and 84% of infections appeared to come from people incubating the virus. In China, the figures ranged from 65% to as much as 87%.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/12/coronavirus-most-infections-spread-by-people-yet-to-show-symptoms-scientists

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Asymptotic people are not going to self-isolate. If these high rates of transmission from people incubating the virus are anywhere near accurate, the entire world needs to rethink testing criteria.

Widespread testing -- of symptomatic and asymptotic -- must be instituted. We know asymptotic people can test positive. We have reports of people with no symptoms testing positive. ID every positive we can. What we need to know is what the false negative rate is prior to developing symptoms. That must be known to determine how soon to retest.

Get that "can do" American spirit going.

Collection kits are dirt cheap. Health care personnel can have stacks of them available. The "bottleneck" is processing.

If every university or public-funded medical center across the nation were "geared up" to have the test processing and reporting capacity the University of Washington currently has (1500 per day), perhaps we could begin to make a dent.

If every private lab capable of testing were brought online, perhaps we could make a bigger dent. Fuck the incompetent and inadequate distribution of the "rationed" CDC tests. NO state or public health authority can rely on the Feds.

If drive thru testing sites like the one University of Washington Medical set up for its employees (soon to be expanded) were set up, perhaps we could make an even bigger dent.

If foundations and public health entities lauched home testing programs, like the one the Gates foundation is working to launch for residents of Seattle, perhaps we could make an even bigger dent.

If any symptomatic person self-isolates until they are "cleared" through testing, we can shift attention to more widespread testing.

There also needs to be a shift to thinking about ways to identify virus free people who can safely continue working. people able to keep economies on life support.

Sure, we need bailouts, obviously we need "social distancing," but we also need appropriations to fund BIG testing programs -- general surveillance testing to identify "hot spots" -- areas where concentrated efforts are needed to test and monitor as many people as we possibly can.