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PETALING JAYA: The asymptomatic spread of Covid-19 is not a good sign, says Director-General of Health Datuk Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah (Photo)
“Asymptomatic spread has not been good news so far.
“A growing body of results shows that people who are asymptomatic appear to have the same viral load as symptomatic cases.
“This means that whether people have symptoms or not, they carry the same amount of virus within them.
“This suggests that transmission is possible from both asymptomatic and markedly ill patients,” said Dr. Hisham in his Facebook post early Friday (May 15).
He cited an article by Gigi Gronvall, immunologist and principal investigator for the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Gronvall, in the article, had cited the Iceland case, where extensive testing effort resulted in 5% of the country’s population undergoing Covid-19 testing, with a laboratory study suggesting that up to 50% of people who had the disease showed no symptoms
He noted that a study conducted in Singapore also showed this.
Gronvall added that due to the asymptomatic spread of the virus, many more tests had to be done and public health officials had to actively search for the cases.
He said people would have to lead an altered lifestyle until there was a vaccine.
Dr. Hisham said that asymptomatic spread meant transmission would be more widespread.
“If you can transmit the virus while you are asymptomatic, it allows further spread by the community. It appears that Covid-19 is proving much more difficult to contain,” Dr. Hisham said, citing the Gronvall article.
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