A new study found that up to 86% of people who are infected with the coronavirus could be going undetected due to a lack of documentation.
The study, which was published Monday in the Journal of Science, showed that six out of every seven COVID-19 cases in China were not reported prior to the implementation of travel restrictions.
“It’s the undocumented infections which are driving the spread of the outbreak,” Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University Mailman School and a co-author of the study, said. “The majority of these infections are mild, with few symptoms at all.”
The study was done using computer modeling and found that undocumented infections were behind two-thirds of reported patients. These “stealth” coronavirus cases then may have transmitted the virus unknowingly to others.
“More active testing procedures would catch more cases,” Shaman said about the solution to “stealth” transmission. “How that would be implemented is something that we can debate for quite some time, and, obviously, this all has to be done under the backdrop of the logistics and costs of implementing lots more tests.”
While there are currently 190,000 confirmed cases worldwide, the study suggested the number of people infected with the coronavirus could actually be well over a million.
