Coronavirus carriers without symptoms can still spread virus – CDC

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of people infected with the new coronavirus don’t present any symptoms or fall ill, but they can still transmit the illness to others.
“One of the [pieces of] information that we have pretty much confirmed now is that a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic,” Redfield told NPR on Tuesday.

These asymptomatic carriers, Redfield added, are likely contributing to the rapid spread of the coronavirus worldwide and making it challenging for experts to assess the true extent of the pandemic.

“We don’t know all the unidentified cases out there. It’s mostly sicker people in hospitals who are being tabulated,” Morse said.

The new findings are leading the CDC to broaden the range of who needs to wear medical masks, as they previously stated that only people showing symptoms should wear a mask

Experts are urging the public to continue with social distancing, and they believe that everyone should be wearing masks to protect themselves against asymptomatic carriers spreading the virus.
The prevalence of asymptomatic transmission doesn’t bode well for global containment efforts, as Bill Gates recently wrote in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine .