Pre-symptomatic and Asymptomatic people can transmit COVID-19: WHO Chief Scientist

NEW DELHI: Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, World Health Organisation, in a conversation with Outlook, stated that both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people can transmit the virus. She said that India and the world should develop strategies accordingly and prepare themselves for a long battle against COVID-19.

The most worrisome characteristic of this deadly virus is that a patient with no symptoms can be a silent spreader and a number of symptoms of coronavirus are so mild that they may be unnoticeable. There is a fair consensus that till date a large number of COVID-19 patients could be paucisymptomatic, or asymptomatic.

Dr Swaminathan while explaining about pre-symptomatic patients, she said they are the patients who don’t show any symptom on that very day but develop symptoms two days later. She added that people need to be more careful and wear masks properly and strictly follow guidelines as there is no single intervention that works and in fact a combined strategy is needed.

Divulging information related to the disease, she said that a lot of it, official and unofficial, is available, so around 1000 publications and 500 papers on an average are screened every day, as the world is not only dealing with pandemic but also an infodemic and people should only go by reliable and credible information from authoritative sources.

Regarding the hype about various under-trial vaccines or drugs, whether it is about experimental vaccine of Oxford University, Patanjali’s Coronil, or approved drugs like Dexamethasone, Remdesivir and Favipiravir, she said that the effectiveness of any drug has to be based on evidence-based studies. It is hard to prove the efficacy of any medicine or drug unless a study is conducted. She further said it is good to try traditional medicines for prevention but there should be some scientific rational to back it.