In a new approach, China to report on asymptomatic cases
BEIJING: China will start making public asymptomatic coronavirus cases starting this Wednesday, health authorities have announced, with Chinese experts saying that one such patient could go on to infect more than three others.
The existence of an unknown number of such carriers, who are infected but do not show symptoms of the disease, means that they could be spreading it without themselves being aware of being infected.
In a separate announcement, China on Tuesday delayed its annual national college entrance exams by a month as authorities continue to contain infected travellers returning from abroad who are triggering new cases, raising concerns over the threat of a second wave of infections.
The announcements came as China reported 48 new imported Covid-19 cases until early on Tuesday, taking the number of confirmed cases on the mainland to 81518, with 3,305 deaths.
No new death was reported in the past 24 hours. China now has 771 cases of imported cases.
Until now, China has not added the number of asymptomatic patients to its daily disease tally, raising questions over whether the official numbers actually reveal the true picture of the state of infections in the country.
The National Health Commission’s (NHC) Chang Jile said on Tuesday at a daily press conference in Hubei that all asymptomatic cases would be centrally quarantined for 14 days.
As of Tuesday, the number of asymptomatic patients under medical observation in China was 1,541 of which 205 were overseas cases.
The existence of a substantial but unknown number of coronavirus carriers displaying no symptoms has raised concerns among the Chinese public that people could still be spreading the virus.
China state media reported that Premier Li Keqiang has stressed the importance of tightening controls around asymptomatic patients.
Li was quoted as saying on Monday that the information of such patients must be disclosed as soon as they are detected, adding it was important to track people who had contact with asymptomatic patients as well.
The number of asymptomatic patients could, in reality, be much higher. Yang Zhanqiu, a Wuhan-based virologist, told Global Times that there could be at least 200,000 virus carriers with no symptoms currently in China.