WHO claims asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'Very Rare'

The spread of Covid-19 by someone who is not showing symptoms appears to be rare, Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's technical lead for coronavirus response and head of the emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said during a media briefing in Geneva on Monday.

"From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual," Van Kerkhove said on Monday."

"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 -- and much of that is not published in the literature," she said. "We are constantly looking at this data and we're trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question. It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward."

Van Kerkhove went on to describe how the novel coronavirus, a respiratory pathogen, spreads through droplets, which can be released when someone coughs or sneezes.

"It passes from an individual through infectious droplets. If we actually followed all of the symptomatic cases, isolated those cases, followed the contacts and quarantined those cases, we would drastically reduce -- I would love to be able to give a proportion of how much transmission we would actually stop -- but it would be a drastic reduction in transmission," she said.

Van Kerkhove also said that what appear to be asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 often turn out to be cases of mild disease. "When we actually go back and we say how many of them were truly asymptomatic, we find out that many have really mild disease," Van Kerkhove said.

"They're not quote-unquote Covid symptoms, meaning they may not have developed fever yet, they may not have had a significant cough, or they may not have shortness of breath -- but some may have mild disease," she said. "Having said that, we do know that there can be people who are truly asymptomatic.

Many people with Covid-19 who may appear to be asymptomatic actually could just have mild or atypical symptoms -- or they could be pre-symptomatic, Dr. Manisha Juthani, an infectious diseases specialist and associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine, said in an email to CNN on Monday.

In particular, questions have been raised about the role of the WHO in the context of the Corona outbreak. It was directly attacked by US President Donald Trump.

Donald Trump made it clear that the WHO was working under Chinese influence. The United States has also banned large-scale funding to the WHO.

Question marks have also been raised over WHO guidelines for using masks. Notably, the WHO has not insisted on the use of the mask since the corona outbreak in China in January.

A few days ago new guidelines regarding masks were announced. But it also makes it clear by the organization that it is not possible to rely on masks alone in Corona's defense.

India now ranks sixth in the list of most coronavirus patients. The number of coronaviruses in India is steadily increasing and measures are being taken to prevent the spread of infection.

The total number of patients in the country has gone up to 2 lakh 56 thousand. More than 9,000 corona patients have been found across the country since the lockdown began in India.