Covid viral load in asymptomatic cases is no less

NEW DELHI: People who show no symptoms of a Covid-19 illness are likely to have comparable levels of the virus in their body as those who exhibit signs of the disease such as fever and cough, according to a new peer-reviewed study of the outbreak in a small town Italian town that recorded the country’s first death.

The findings reaffirm the need for aggressive testing and widespread use of face-covering objects such as masks, especially in a country like India where detection of silent spreaders could prove difficult due to high population density.

The study covered most of the 3,200 people in the town of Vò who were tested for infection at the start of a 14-day lockdown and after two weeks. “We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load of symptomatic versus asymptomatic,” the report said.

NEW DELHI : People who show no symptoms of a Covid-19 illness are likely to have comparable levels of the virus in their body as those who exhibit signs such as fever and cough, according to a new peer-reviewed study of the outbreak in a small town Italian town that recorded the country’s first death.

The findings reaffirm the need for indiscriminate testing of people and widespread use of facecovering objects such as masks, especially in a country like India where detection of silent spreaders could prove to be difficult due to high population density.

The study covered most of the 3,200 people in the town of Vò, who were tested for infection at the start of a 14-day lockdown and after two weeks. “Notably, 42.5% (95% CI 31.5-54.6%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic (i.e. did not have symptoms at the time of swab testing and did not develop symptoms afterwards)... We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load of symptomatic versus asymptomatic,” the report by researchers from University of Padua and Imperial College London said.

Italy was one of the first Western nations to be prominent hit, with close to 15% of all infected people succumbing to the viral illness. The fatality ratio is close thrice the global average.

While viral load does not exactly reflect how infectious a person is, it largely is believed to be a contributor to ‘viral shedding’.

“The result on asymptomatic carriers is key… This tells us that if we find a certain number of symptomatic people testing positive, we expect the same number of asymptomatic carriers that are much more difficult to identify and isolate,” said one of the authors, Enrico Lavezzo, from the department of molecular medicine of the University of Padua, in an email to HT.

“On the one hand, it is likely that a symptomatic infection transmits large quantities of virus, it is also reasonable to think that symptoms may induce a symptomatic infection to stay at home thus limiting the number of contacts and hence the transmission potential,” Lavezzo said, adding that asymptomatic people are then more likely to fuel an outbreak.