80% Of Covid-19 Patients In India Do Not Show Visible Symptoms, Proving We Need Massive Testing

A sign of massive worry, the health ministry in its brief, said 80 per cent of the COVID-19 patients are either asymptomatic or show mild symptoms.

"On the basis of worldwide analysis, 80 per cent of the COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms. Around 15 per cent patients turn into severe cases and 5 per cent may become critical," Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, said at a daily press briefing.

The asymptomatic patients may pass on the infection to other people, he earlier had said while stressing on maintaining social distancing in the community and infection prevention and control practices in hospital setups.

Reuters

Head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar said 80 out of 100 infected people do not show any symptoms.

Officials said as of now, there is no plan to further widen the testing criteria.

As part of a revised testing strategy, the government has started testing people with fever, cough and sore throat in hotspots or cluster areas and evacuees centres.

Out of 100 coronavirus patients, 80 per cent are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms: ICMR

¡ª Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) April 20, 2020

Also, all hospitalised patients with severe acute respiratory illness, shortness of breath, fever and cough are being tested for COVID-19 infection.

As the number of confirmed #coronavirus cases in the country jump past 17,000, a worry associated with the spread of viral infection is emerging - the asymptomatic cases or people who do not show symptoms of the infection may not be identified through contact tracing & tests. pic.twitter.com/qRuZv3aFms

¡ª IANS Tweets (@ians_india) April 20, 2020

Direct and high-risk contacts of confirmed cases are also being tested once between day five and 14 of coming in his/her contact.

Need for large-scale testing

Identifying such persons is extremely difficult, unless massive testing is done. Currently, the government is testing contacts of a positive person and those living in containment zones. Testing of asymptomatic persons started just recently.

BCCL

This has grown the call for testing of people at large scale to eliminate the probability of more people getting infected due to asymptomatic persons.

Now that coronavirus testing has started, the number of people being infected by the novel virus is expected to increase sharply.

On Saturday, Delhi reported 186 asymptomatic cases. Other states such as Punjab, Uttar Pradesh have also reported patients showing no visible symptoms.