WHO Says Asymptomatic Spread Of COVID-19 " Very Rare", Later Clarifies

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, June 9, issued a clarification on their statement that coronavirus transmission from asymptomatic carriers was "very rare."

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead for coronavirus response had said earlier that, "We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts and they're not finding secondary transmission onward. It's very rare."

The WHO official had told that it seemed to be rare that an asymptomatic person would actually transmit the infection onward to a secondary individual, following a social media uproar she clarified that while 6-41 per cent COVID infected people may not show symptoms, many might transmit the disease.

However, Kerkhove clarified on her statement saying: "What I was referring to yesterday in the press conference were very few studies - some two or three studies that had been published that actually try to follow asymptomatic cases, so people who are infected, over time, and then look at all of their contacts and see how many additional people were infected."

She explained that she earlier referred to a very "small subset of studies" while responding to a question at the press conference. She asserted that she was not stating a policy of the WHO.

"This is a major unknown, because there are so many unknowns around this, some modeling groups have tried to estimate what is the proportion of asymptomatic people that may transmit," she added.

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