BENGALURU: In spite of Karnataka's increasing COVID-19 incidence rate, with recent figures adding up to 359 cases, citizens can take comfort in the fact that there are more asymptomatic patients than symptomatic patients in the state.
As of April 17, there were 192 asymptomatic COVID-19 positive cases of a total of 359, as per information provided by the State Government.
Even in hotspots such as Mysuru, Kalaburagi, Chikkaballapur and Bidar, asymptomatic patients are more in number than the symptomatic ones.
As of Thursday, 186 coronavirus-positive patients of the total 315 were asymptomatic in Karnataka.
Dr C Nagaraj, Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute Of Chest Diseases (RGICD), said, “Asymptomatic means the patients have very mild symptoms like weakness, body ache or mild headache that often go unnoticed. They won’t have breathlessness, cough, cold, sore throat, fever which symptomatic patients have.”
‘Reasons for asymptomatic cases could be age factor’
“The reasons could be the age factor. Moreover, it depends on the viral load. The lesser the viral load, the less symptomatic the patients are. Co-morbidity such as diabetes, hypertension, heart, lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease make people vulnerable, and therefore symptomatic,” Dr Nagaraj, RGICD director, added.
At a press conference on Friday, health officials said some people who are mildly symptomatic do not even notice their symptoms, but can pass on the virus to others who, in turn, may develop moderate or severe symptoms.
As of Thursday, the highest number of cases were in the 30-40 age bracket with 74 cases, followed by 69 cases in the 20-30 age bracket, as per the state war room data.
The vulnerable age groups such as 0-5, 5-10, 60 -70 and more than 70 years old, saw 6, 8, 41 and 15 cases, respectively.