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London, April 27 (IANS): Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, calling for unprecedented steps to defeat COVID-19, have said that asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has made controlling the spread of the disease even more difficult.
SARS-CoV-2 is the virus responsible for COVID-19 that so far has affected 2.9 million people worldwide and has killed more than 200,000.
Therefore, controlling the disease requires testing even asymptomatic cases in different population settings, such as prisons, closed mental health facilities, homeless shelters, hospitalized patients, and other coexistence situations, the researchers argued in an editorial. published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on April 24.
“Ultimately, the rapid spread of Covid-19 in the United States and the world, clear evidence of the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from asymptomatic individuals, and the eventual need to relax current practices of social distancing advocate expansion SARS-CoV-2 tests to include asymptomatic people in prioritized settings, “wrote authors Monica Gandhi, Deborah S. Yokoe and Diane V. Havlir.
The authors also argued that these factors support the case for the general public to wear face masks when they are in crowded spaces outdoors or indoors.
In India, the Union Ministry of Health said on April 20 that 80 percent of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.
When Covid-19 burst onto the world stage, public health officials thought that implementing interventions that were used to control severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 could yield similar results.
These strategies included symptom-based case detection and subsequent testing to guide isolation and quarantine.
In their NEJM editorial, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco noted that there are differences in the transmission and spread of SARS-CoV-1 and SARSCoV-2.
SARS was monitored within 8 months after SARS-CoV-1 had infected about 8,100 people in limited geographic areas.
In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 has infected many more people in five months, the researchers noted, adding that it is spreading worldwide even now very quickly.
“A key factor in the transmissibility of Covid-19 is the high level of SARS-CoV-2 release in the upper respiratory tract, even among presymptomatic patients, which distinguishes it from SARS-CoV-1, where replication occurs primarily in the lower respiratory tract, “the authors wrote.
“Viral loads with SARS-CoV-1, which are associated with the onset of symptoms, reach a median of 5 days later than viral loads with SARS-CoV-2, making detection of infection based on symptoms are more effective in the case of SARS CoV -1 “, they added.
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