World Health Organization: Asymptomatic COVID Spread "Very Rare"

As more and more COVID-19 data comes in, and more and more COVID-19 research is conducted, it would appear that we're only gaining new questions, instead of answers. But the latest one of these revaluations could be the biggest.

Over the last few weeks, we've seen the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention change their stance on surface transmission of COVID-19. Where now they believe spread of the virus on surfaces and objects is very rare. We've also had the World Health Organization (WHO) flip flop between whether or not healthy people should be wearing masks.

Perhaps the most egregious change in the last month comes from two elite medical journals, Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, who had to retract research. Those two medical journals published research on hydroxychloroquine, a drug being used in clinical trials to treat COVID. When their research was posted, the WHO ended their study, and governments banned the drug. But it was all based on false data.

Now, research is helping to confirm a stance that the World Health Organization has held for months. The spread of COVID-19 by asymptomatic individuals is rare.

World Health Organization infectious disease expert Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said in a press conference this week:

"From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts and they're not finding secondary transmission onward. It is very rare"

But this isn't actually a new stance for the World Health Organization. Back in February they published research that pointed to less transmission by asymptomatic carriers. All the way back in February, they wrote:

"Asymptomatic infection may be rare, and transmission from an asymptomatic person is very rare with other coronaviruses, as we have seen with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus. Thus, transmission from asymptomatic cases is likely not a major driver of transmission."

Other recent research adds more dimensions to the ongoing struggle to understand COVID-19. Including an explosive piece from NPR that calls into question the severity of the illness. Pointing out that the virus is "less deadly" that originally thought.

In Louisiana, one of our leading experts, Dr. Alex Billioux, Assistant Secretary of Health for the Louisiana Department of Health's Office of Public Health, recently told KEEL News that new "positive cases" of the virus doesn't mean "things are getting out of hand". Which is why the State of Louisiana has averaged more than 2,500 new positive COVID cases reported each week, for the last 7 weeks, while those same weeks have averaged a decline of more than 170 hospitalized COVID patients.