Wuhan claims its ‘silent coronavirus carriers’ are ‘not contagious’ after scientists ‘analysed clinical samples from all of them’
- Officials said hundreds of ‘silent carriers’ in Wuhan would not transmit the virus
- Scientists had failed to grow a live virus from their clinical samples, they added
- Experts previously believed asymptomatic carriers could still spread the disease
- Such patients carry the bug but do not show symptoms, such as coughs or fevers
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Officials of Wuhan have claimed that hundreds of ‘silent coronavirus carriers’ currently living in the city would not spread the deadly disease.
The Wuhan health commission today declared such carriers ‘not contagious’ after it said scientists had analysed clinical samples from all of them.
Experts previously believed that asymptomatic patients – those who carry the bug but do not show symptoms – could still transmit the killer infection.
Wuhan’s government identified 300 asymptomatic patients after screening nearly every resident for COVID-19 between late May and early June. Pictured, medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for the novel coronavirus on a street of Wuhan on May 15
Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic started last December, has 300 ‘silent carriers’ at present, according to officials.
The local government identified these patients after screening nearly every resident for the virus between late May and early June.
Officials said that experts had collected clinical samples from the toothbrushes, cups, face masks and towels used by those patients.
Lab tests were carried out and all results came back negative, the health commission said in a statement.
The authority said that scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had failed to grow a live virus from those patients’ phlegm and respiratory tract fluids. The above file picture shows researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology working in a lab on February 23, 2017
The authority also said that scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had separated the virus from the samples of their phlegm and respiratory tract fluids, but failed to grow a live virus from them.
Furthermore, officials stressed that all of the 1,174 close contacts of those patients had tested negative for COVID-19.
‘[This] means the asymptomatic patients discovered so far in our city are not contagious,’ the statement concluded.
The virus has killed 4,634 people and sickened 83,040 in China, including 3,869 fatalities and 50,340 infections in former epicentre Wuhan, according to the country’s official figures.
Experts previously believed that asymptomatic patients – those who carry the bug but do not show symptoms – could still transmit the killer infection. But Wuhan’s government today said that hundreds of such ‘silent carriers’ currently living in the city were ‘not contagious’
The news comes as satellite data suggests that coronavirus could have hit China last summer.
A surge in road traffic outside Wuhan hospitals at the end of last summer – coupled with an increase in internet searches for coronavirus-like symptoms – suggests COVID-19 could have hit China before autumn.
That is far earlier than previously speculated.
A new study from Harvard Medical School led by Dr John Brownstein analysed commercial satellite imagery.
His team ‘observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019’.
He said the traffic surge ‘coincided’ with a rise in internet searches for symptoms that are ‘closely associated’ with coronavirus, ABC News reported.
Since the virus outbreak in China rapidly spread across the globe, more than seven million people have been infected worldwide alongside a staggering 403,000 deaths.
Officials in China did not formally notify the World Health Organization until 31 December that a respiratory pathogen was spreading through Wuhan, a move that has drawn heavy criticism to the government.