‘Silent carriers’ face quarantine detention as tests are stepped up

CHINA has tightened controls on asymptomatic Covid-19 patients to curb further infections.

The country’s State Council has now ordered medical institutions to report asymptomatic patients within two hours once identified.

Asymptomatic patients are people who show none of the classic coronavirus symptoms such as a fever and cough, but who are found to be carrying the virus in their respiratory system. These “silent carriers” are capable of transmitting the virus to others.

The Chinese authorities are ordering such patients to be placed under a 14day centralised quarantine for medical observation.

Once they have served the two-week quarantine and have tested negative twice in a row with testing once every 24 hours, they are relieved from the centralised quarantine.

If an asymptomatic patient is still testing positive for Covid-19 after two weeks in quarantine, the person needs to carry on with their confinement, the new rules stipulate.

Those who are dismissed from centralised quarantine still need to be under medical observation for another fortnight. Though it is not required, the person is advised to follow up with a designated hospital after two weeks and again after four weeks on their health status.

China has also widened the scope of contact chasing by offering more Covid-19 tests to a number of groups.

They include close contacts of infected patients, those in centralised

1,104

The number of infected patients showing no symptoms who were under observation in China yesterday

quarantine, people who were unknowingly exposed to the infected patients, arrivals who recently travelled to countries with high rates of infection and medical personnel.

China’s National Health Commission first suggested asymptomatic patients could be a source of transmission on Feb 5.

As epidemiologists gather more scientific data, they have found asymptomatic patients and patients with symptoms carry a similar level of Covid-19 viral load. Thus, asymptomatic patients are at risk of spreading the virus.

The National Health Commission began to include asymptomatic patients in the daily tally of Covid-19 cases on March 31. Yesterday, the commission reported that 1,104 asymptomatic patients were under medical observation.

Singapore released a study on April 1 that found at least 10 people in the city state had contracted the novel coronavirus from those without symptoms.

The study examined 157 cases in Singapore between Jan 23 and March 16 and found 10 attributed to pre-symptomatic transmission.

One involved a 52-year-old woman who sat in a church seat that had been occupied by a pair of infected patients earlier in the day. The pair were tourists from Wuhan, China, who had not shown symptoms at the time.