Potentially as much as 60% of COVID-19 transmission is asymptomatic or presymptomatic, according to a 2021 study, and that may be even higher now.
That may be even higher now, as early reports have signaled a greater percentage of asymptomatic infections from omicron than from previous variants. That could have a lot to do with higher baseline levels of immunity in the population when that variant hit, Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told MedPage Today.
Those with diminished viral loads may be less likely to transmit the disease, but they can still infect others, she said. And breakthrough cases can still carry high viral loads, as was observed in the“Spaces that are not well ventilated, have large numbers of individuals and places where people are speaking loudly or eating, those are the spaces that we should be most concerned about,” Chu said.
But he also noted that high levels of population immunity puts the U.S. in a “completely different situation from earlier when there weren’t vaccines and few people had been infected.”Nonetheless, both Chu and Yang said the high rate of asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission highlights the need for continued mitigation measures, especially to protect vulnerable populations such as children under 5 and the immunocompromised.
Yang also cautioned that continued transmission brings “more opportunity for new variants to develop, and the next variant could be more deadly for all we know.”
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