Most of the coronavirus transmission comes from people who are asymptomatic and never develop signs of the virus, a senior official with the Department of Health and Human Services said Friday.
“Simply feeling that you want to go for a test is not the best strategy, but we know that most of the spread comes from asymptomatic people, especially young adults, so you have to launch a broad network and I think we can do that. “Admiral Brett Giroir, HHS’s undersecretary of health, said in an interview on CNBC’s” Squawk Box “.
An asymptomatic person is someone with Covid-19 who has no signs of the virus and never develops them. Scientists have found that people who do not have symptoms can transmit the virus. That includes asymptomatic people, as well as people in the pre-symptomatic stage, a few days before they start showing signs of the virus.
Giroir’s comment comes as the virus continues to spread rapidly throughout the United States. The nation reported 77,255 new cases of coronavirus on Thursday, breaking its previous record peak of a single day in new cases at nearly 10,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
State and federal health officials say younger and younger, who might otherwise appear healthy, ignore social distancing measures and contract the virus at a higher rate. However, they say that even people who never develop symptoms can also transmit the virus to others.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said Thursday that asymptomatic people carry both viruses and symptomatic people.
“When measuring the level of virus in the nasal pharynx of asymptomatic people, compared to symptomatic people, there does not appear to be any difference, which means that there is as much virus in the nose of an asymptomatic person as there is in a symptomatic person, “Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview.
Giroir said Friday that Covid-19 “is not the flu,” adding that the United States should allow asymptomatic people to get tested.
“When I talk about unnecessary testing, we know that there are a lot of people who are asked to have a new test at the end of their illness and some people are tested four, five, six times and that is really unnecessary,” he said. . .
“According to the guidelines, if 10 days have passed since the onset of your illness and at least three days without symptoms, that’s fine,” he said. “It’s like someone with the flu, you never come back and you get tested two or three times for the flu.”
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