WHO official says spread of coronavirus by people with NO symptoms is very RARE - contradicting claims from health officials that asymptomatic carriers could be fueling virus spread by stealth

The spread of COVID-19 by someone who is not showing symptoms of the virus ‘appears to be rare’, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday, casting doubt on concerns made by some researchers that the disease could be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic infections.

Preliminary research into the coronavirus outbreak indicated that the deadly disease could be spread through person-to-person contact even if the carrier had no symptoms.

While WHO says asymptomatic spread can still occur, scientists believe it’s no longer the main way the virus is being transmitted.

‘From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,’ said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, during a press briefing Monday.

We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts and they're not finding secondary transmission onward. It is very rare - and much of that is not published in the literature,’ she said

As a result, Kerkhove advised that government responses should prioritize detecting and isolating infected people with symptoms, and tracking anyone who might have come into contact with them.

However Kerkhove conceded the findings are not yet conclusive.

‘We are constantly looking at this data, and we're trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,’ she said. ‘It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward.’

If asymptomatic spread proves to not be the main catalyst of coronavirus transmission, the implications could be huge.

Ref: Daily Mail