THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A video clip circulating on social media -- showing a World Health Organization (WHO) official making a statement on asymptomatic persons -- has become a new headache for the state. “It seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” WHO emerging diseases and zoonosis unit head Dr Maria Van Kerkhove had said during a press briefing in Geneva a week ago.
Public health experts say the statement is a deterrent to the state’s coronavirus containment activities, especially the campaign to wear facemasks. While WHO later came out with a clarification that “much remains unknown on the virus”, experts point out that the damage had already been done as many people now presume that there is no such thing as an asymptomatic transmission, which refers to the spread of the virus from a person without symptoms.
“Covid-19 is a highly contagious respiratory infection and the debate is on about how the virus gets transmitted. While there is much weight to the argument that transmission occurs mostly from symptomatic people through close contact with others, we are not in a position to rule out transmission caused by asymptomatic persons,” an officer with the health department told TNIE.
The officer said WHO, in the first place, shouldn’t have said so. “It might have created the wrong impression that there is no such thing like asymptomatic transmission. It may also persuade people not to wear masks. Of the cases reported in the state, around 62 per cent concerned asymptomatic persons or those with mild symptoms,” the officer said. Meanwhile, Dr P S Shajahan, of the Academy of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, said, “As per existing medical literature, a single cough or sneezing or talking for five minutes could generate a droplet nuclei equal to 3,000 droplet particles.
In the case of Covid-19, the disease is said to be spread through droplets. What if one encounters an asymptomatic person who is not wearing a facemask?” he said. The situation, he said, is such that everyone should be considered Covid-19 suspect unless proved otherwise.