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Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases
The numbers of novel coronavirus cases continue to grow at an unprecedented rate across the world. Attempts to control the growth of the virus using masks and social-distancing, and, recently, double-masking as well, continue to be difficult to maintain, in part due to the extent of asymptomatic cas...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8167653/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33918578 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/idr13020033 |
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author | Snider, Brett Patel, Bhumi McBean, Edward |
author_facet | Snider, Brett Patel, Bhumi McBean, Edward |
author_sort | Snider, Brett |
collection | PubMed |
description | The numbers of novel coronavirus cases continue to grow at an unprecedented rate across the world. Attempts to control the growth of the virus using masks and social-distancing, and, recently, double-masking as well, continue to be difficult to maintain, in part due to the extent of asymptomatic cases. Analyses of large datasets consisting of 219,075 individual cases in Ontario, indicated that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases are substantial in number. Large numbers of cases in children aged 0–9 were asymptomatic or had only one symptom (35.0% and 31.4% of total cases, respectively) and resulted in fever as the most common symptom (30.6% of total cases). COVID-19 cases in children were more likely to be milder symptomatic with cough not seen as frequently as in adults aged over 40, and past research has shown children to be index cases in familial clusters. These findings highlight the importance of targeting asymptomatic and mild infections in the continuing effort to control the spread of COVID-19. The Pearson correlation coefficient between test positivity rates and asymptomatic rates of −0.729 indicates that estimates of the asymptomatic rates should be obtained when the test positivity rates are lowest as the best approach. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8167653 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81676532021-06-02 Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases Snider, Brett Patel, Bhumi McBean, Edward Infect Dis Rep Article The numbers of novel coronavirus cases continue to grow at an unprecedented rate across the world. Attempts to control the growth of the virus using masks and social-distancing, and, recently, double-masking as well, continue to be difficult to maintain, in part due to the extent of asymptomatic cases. Analyses of large datasets consisting of 219,075 individual cases in Ontario, indicated that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases are substantial in number. Large numbers of cases in children aged 0–9 were asymptomatic or had only one symptom (35.0% and 31.4% of total cases, respectively) and resulted in fever as the most common symptom (30.6% of total cases). COVID-19 cases in children were more likely to be milder symptomatic with cough not seen as frequently as in adults aged over 40, and past research has shown children to be index cases in familial clusters. These findings highlight the importance of targeting asymptomatic and mild infections in the continuing effort to control the spread of COVID-19. The Pearson correlation coefficient between test positivity rates and asymptomatic rates of −0.729 indicates that estimates of the asymptomatic rates should be obtained when the test positivity rates are lowest as the best approach. MDPI 2021-04-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8167653/ /pubmed/33918578 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/idr13020033 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Snider, Brett Patel, Bhumi McBean, Edward Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title | Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title_full | Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title_fullStr | Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title_full_unstemmed | Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title_short | Asymptomatic Cases, the Hidden Challenge in Predicting COVID-19 Caseload Increases |
title_sort | asymptomatic cases, the hidden challenge in predicting covid-19 caseload increases |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8167653/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33918578 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/idr13020033 |
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