On Tuesday, ICMR has revealed for the first time that almost 69 per cent patients in India are found to be asymptomatic for coronavirus disease. This means that approximately 7 out of 10 coronavirus patients can become silent spreaders of the infection if they are not quarantined in the facility.

There are almost 19,000 infected patients in the country. As per the estimation by the government, it suggests that nearly 13,000 of these people have no symptoms identified with the disease.

Chief epidemiologist with the Indian Council of Medical Research, Dr RR Gangakhedkar, said that most of those people without symptoms were identified through contact tracing of the positive cases.

In India, the testing has been limited only to those who have returned from an international travel and have developed some symptoms, their close contacts, and healthcare staff treating confirmed coronavirus patients.

Later, the testing was expanded to all hospitalized patients with severe acute respiratory illnesses and influenza-like ailments in hotspot areas.

It has been estimated that globally approximately 80 per cent of all COVID-19 patients have only mild or no symptoms and do not require hospitalization. 15 per cent are moderately sick, whereas only 5 per cent need ICU care. Almost three per cent succumb to the infection.

A large proportion of asymptomatic cases means that they do not require hospital care for themselves, but these patients can involuntarily spread the infection to several other people and few of whom can get severely sick.

In the meantime, public health specialists said that as that there are other symptoms related to COVID-19, apart from the standard symptoms of fever, dry cough and breathlessness, it is possible that few of them is not been documented due to lack of specific questioning to the patients.

Dr Oommen John, public health researcher said that there are few lesser-known symptoms such as gastrointestinal upset, loss of smell and headache, which might had got missed in rapid testing settings. The presence of a huge number of infected patients with no or very mild symptoms highlights the necessity to create more awareness for reporting such cases. They can be then isolated and the outbreak can be controlled.

Source: The New Indian Express