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By Dennis Thompson<\/b>
HealthDay Reporter<\/i><\/p>\n
TUESDAY, Sept. 22, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Folks shrugging off the risk of COVID-19<\/a> because they don’t think the virus will do them much harm might want to think again.<\/p>\n As many as four out of five people infected with the new coronavirus likely will suffer some symptoms of COVID-19<\/a>, a new analysis shows.<\/p>\n Only about 20% of infected people remain symptom-free while they carry the new coronavirus, according to a review of 79 COVID-19<\/a> studies. These studies involved just over 6,600 people, of whom 1,287 remained asymptomatic.<\/p>\n These results support the moves that have been taken to impede the spread of SARS<\/a>-CoV-2, said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.<\/p>\n “Masks, social distancing, hand-washing and avoiding crowds — we know these are the four things that really will mitigate the spread,” Horovitz said.<\/p>\n The new figure of around 20% is at the low end of previous estimates of asymptomatic COVID-19<\/a> cases, said Dr. Susan Kline, a professor of infectious diseases with the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n “I thought it was somewhere between about 15% and 50%,” Kline said. “I think this is a nice paper because it has pulled in a lot of different articles and then they show how all their estimates vary and they point out some of the differences in the way the studies were set up.”<\/p>\n However, Kline sees the glass as half-empty rather than half-full.<\/p>\n “I would say 20% is still a fairly large number,” Kline said. “I don’t think it really changes our guidance that everyone should wear a mask, which was primarily to prevent those with asymptomatic infection from spreading it to others, especially in public places.”<\/p>\n But Horovitz and other experts said the jury’s still out on how many COVID-19<\/a> patients truly remain asymptomatic throughout their infection.<\/p>\n
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