Unanswered questions
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) appeared in 2003 and spread to 26 countries. It infected eight thousand people and caused at least 774 deaths. Until January of this year, when the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus began to assume global dimensions, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) had caused 866 deaths in 2,519 cases. SARS and MERS are both associated with coronaviruses that are not as easily transmitted as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19 disease. There are already close to 10.5 million confirmed cases of infection with the new coronavirus, more than half a million dead and more than 5,000 recovered globally. The greatest difficulty in transmitting SARS and MERS, when compared to covid-19, is due to the fact that they need close contact with the infected, since they tend not to transmit the virus before showing symptoms.
What is the role of asymptomatic patients in transmission?
Challenged by Expresso to indicate the main questions about covid-19 that still do not have an answer, public health doctor Teresa Leão advanced two. “What is the exact role of asymptomatic people in the transmission of the virus and whether, in fact, the risk of transmission is as high as in people who are symptomatic? How effective is the use of the mask in community protection from the disease, compared to social distance? ”, He enumerated.
–
