Symptomatic COVID-19 patients are FOUR TIMES more likely to spread the virus to close contacts

COVID-19 patients who develop symptoms are four times more likely to spread the virus than those who are asymptomatic, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Georgia in Atlanta and the Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Hangzhou, China, examined COVID-19 transmission data in southeastern Zhejiang Province. from the country.

They found that the virus was most likely to spread from person to person in the window between two days before a person first felt symptoms and three days after.

The results help provide scientists with better insight into which patients are most likely to spread the virus and how quickly.

Researchers have found that symptomatic COVID-19 patients are four times more likely to spread the virus than asymptomatic patients. Moderate COVID-19 patients 4.3 times more likely to spread the virus

COVID-19 patients are most contagious during the window starting two days before the first symptoms and three days after, the risk increasing by 30% in this window

For the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the team collected data from 730 patients in Zhejiang province from January 8 to July 30, 2020.

The researchers used existing contact tracing data to find 8,852 close contacts with these patients during the time they were contagious.

Close contacts who interacted with a COVID-19 patient between two days before or three days after their symptoms first appeared were more likely to catch the virus.

The risk of transmission has increased by about 30 percent, implying that patients are more contagious during this window of time.

“Our study suggests that transmission of COVID-19 is more likely if contacts are exposed shortly before and after symptom onset in the index patient,” the authors wrote.

Getting COVID-19 from a symptomatic person makes a person more likely to have symptoms themselves. Those who allegedly caught Covid from someone with symptoms were only 30% as likely to be asymptomatic

People who contracted the virus and had no symptoms were also less likely to spread it.

Researchers found that people with mild symptoms of COVID-19 were four times more likely to spread the virus than asymptomatic people.

Patients with moderate symptoms were 4.3 times more likely to spread the virus than asymptomatic people.

Those who contracted the virus from a symptomatic person were also about 30% more likely to have an asymptomatic case than those who contracted the virus from a person without symptoms.

“We found that contacts exposed to asymptomatic index patients were less likely to develop COVID-19 and, given the infection, were more likely to be asymptomatic,” the researchers wrote.

“This result suggests that there may be a dose-response association between the severity of the index patient’s COVID-19 case and clinical presentation among contacts.

“If confirmed in further studies, this finding may suggest additional secondary benefits associated with reducing the severity of cases in people with COVID-19 through vaccination or prompt diagnosis and treatment.”

The research team believe these findings could be a key to understanding the virus, how it spreads, and how to conduct contact tracing.

Reducing symptoms also appears to reduce the spread, which means getting the shot could be even more important.

“These results have important implications for understanding the dynamics of COVID-19 transmission and are consistent with recent results suggesting that viral load may peak two days before symptoms appear and decline rapidly after one week of symptoms,” said they wrote.