Patients with symptomatic COVID-19 are FOUR times more likely to spread the virus to close contacts than those who have no symptoms.
- A new study finds that patients with COVID-19 who are symptomatic are four times more likely to spread the virus than asymptomatic patients
- Hiring COVID-19 from a symptomatic person also puts someone at greater risk for a symptomatic case.
- Patients are more symptomatic two days before experiencing symptoms for the first time and for the next three days, with a 30% increase in transmission.
- If reducing symptoms can reduce transmission, researchers believe vaccination is even more important to prevent the spread of the virus.
According to a new study, patients with COVID-19 who have symptoms are four times more likely to catch the virus than asymptomatic ones.
Researchers from the University of Georgia in Atlanta and the Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Prevention and Control in Hangzhou, China, examined COVID-19 transmission data in Zhejiang province in the southeastern part of the country.
They found that the virus was more likely to be transmitted from one person to another in the window between two days before a person first experienced symptoms and three days later.
The findings help scientists better understand which patients are most likely to spread the virus and how quickly.
The researchers found that patients with symptomatic COVID-19 are four times more likely to spread the virus than asymptomatic patients. Patients with moderate COVID-19 are 4.3 times more likely to catch the virus
Patients with COVID-19 are more contagious during the window, starting two days before presenting symptoms and three days later, with a risk that increases by 30% in this window.
For the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the team collected data from 730 patients in Zhejiang Province from January 8 to July 30, 2020.
The researchers used existing contact tracking data to find 8,852 contacts close to those patients during the time they were contagious.
Closer contacts who interacted with a COVID-19 patient between two days before or three days after the first onset of their symptoms were more likely to detect the virus.
The risk of transmission increased by about 30 percent, which implies that patients are more contagious during this time period.
“Our study suggests that COVID-19 transmission is more likely if contacts are exposed shortly before and after the onset of symptoms in the index patient,” the authors wrote.
Taking COVID-19 to a symptomatic person causes one person to have more symptoms. Those believed to have taken Covid by someone with symptoms were only 30% more likely to be asymptomatic.
People who contracted the virus and showed no symptoms were also less likely to spread it.
The researchers found that those with mild symptoms of COVID-19 were four times more likely to catch the virus than someone asymptomatic.
Patients with moderate symptoms were 4.3 times more likely to contract the virus compared with asymptomatic individuals.
Those who contracted the virus from a symptomatic person were also about 30% more likely to suffer from an asymptomatic case than those who contracted the virus from an asymptomatic person.
“We found that contacts exposed to patients with asymptomatic index were less likely to develop COVID-19 and, given the infection, were more likely to be asymptomatic,” the researchers wrote.
“This result suggests that there may be a dose-response association between the severity of the index patient’s COVID-19 case and the clinical presentation between contacts.
“If confirmed in other studies, this result may suggest additional secondary benefits associated with reducing the severity of cases of people with COVID-19 through rapid vaccination or diagnosis and treatment.”
The research team believes these findings could be a key to understanding the virus, how it spreads, and how to track contacts.
Reducing symptoms also seems to reduce the spread, which means vaccination may be even more important.
“These results have important implications for understanding the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 and are consistent with recent results suggesting that viral load may reach a maximum of two days before the onset of symptoms and decrease rapidly after one week. of symptoms, ”they wrote.