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A new study of COVID-19 patients in China revealed that 42% of patients who presented no symptoms were contagious for less time than those showing symptoms.
“Although patients who were asymptomatic experienced less harm to themselves, they may have been unaware of their disease and therefore not isolated themselves or sought treatment, or they may have been overlooked by health care workers and thus unknowingly transmitted the virus to others,” wrote researchers at Wuhan University in China, where the outbreak was first discovered
For the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 78 patients had COVID-19. The patients without symptoms had the antibodies for only eight days compared to those with symptoms who were sick for 19 days.
“Close contacts of patients with COVID-19 should be closely monitored to avoid secondary transmission,” the authors wrote
