A WHO official said at a recent press conference that asymptomatic people were not contagious, before retracting.
- WHO official says infected and asymptomatic people are low to non-infectious
- Comments that aroused the indignation of several doctors
- This was actually not an official announcement.
Are asymptotic people contagious? Difficult, it seems, to decide on the question. Monday, Maria Van Kerkhove, technical manager of the cell in charge of managing the pandemic of Covid-19 to the World Health Organization (WHO) came forward stating that transmission of the virus from infected people with no symptoms appeared “very rare”.
Between false hope and indignation
“We are trying to get more information from countries to really answer this question. But it seems rare for an asymptomatic person to transmit”she said, based on a few studies carried out in several countries since the start of the crisis.
These remarks, widely relayed, have fueled the fantasies of those who need hope and aroused the indignation of several doctors. “Contrary to what the WHO has announced, it is not scientifically possible to affirm that asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2 are not very contaminating.reacted on Twitter Professor Gilbert Deray, doctor at Pitié-Salpêtrière.
Contrary to what the WHO has announced, it is not scientifically possible to affirm that asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2 are not very contaminating.
— deray gilbert (@GilbertDeray) June 9, 2020
“There remain scientific uncertainties, but asymptomatic infections could be around 30 to 50% of cases. The best scientific studies to date suggest that up to half of cases were infected by asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people”for his part recalls the Professor Liam Smeeth from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The WHO retracts and plays the temperance card
Faced with the reactions of the scientific community, Maria Van Kerkhove mentioned “a misunderstanding” and wished to clarify his remarks: “I was referring to a very small number of studies, two or three” in response to a reporter’s question. It is therefore not an official announcement, but comments launched in a hurry in the lion’s den. “This is a major unknown and because there are so many unknowns around [la transmission du virus par des personnes insymptomatiques, NDLR], some modeling groups have tried to estimate what proportion of asymptomatic individuals are contagious.”
Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, confirmed there was still a lot to learn about the spread of the virus from asymptomatic people. “Whatever the proportion of diseases transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, as Maria said, remains an unknown data”he tempered.
Also, mystery solved: there is no evidence that asymptomatic people are not contagious to their peers. The trend for the moment would even be the opposite: everything suggests according to current data that asymptomatic people are the most contagious.
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