Do asymptomatic people have symptoms?

The profile of the virus carriers in the new outbreaks has varied: nearly 90% are asymptomatic young people, whose contagion capacity remains intact.

It seems like a truism, but do asymptomatic people have symptoms? The answer, obviously, is negative. However, as concern grows over new coronavirus outbreaks, experts are striving to look for some indication in patients without symptoms, whose effective diagnosis can only be verified by PCR tests. In this new wave of covid, the profile of those infected seems to have changed. According to Health sources from the Government of Aragon, the majority of the new cases, around 90%, are "young people with mild or asymptomatic symptoms." In fact, of the 272 registered last Thursday, 115 were asymptomatic. This shows the importance of ambitious tracking, since many people can be infected and not have any symptoms or they may be so mild that they do not even notice them. In Aragón, around 2.000 PCR tests are being carried out daily, which represents a higher diagnostic capacity than in other Communities. This is also attributed to the fact that, these days, the Community seems to be 'ground zero' of the outbreaks.

The fact that the new profile is that of young people may seem like an advantage because it relieves stress in hospitals at first, but, given that asymptomatic people have the same contagion capacity, it forces us to be alert because their activity complicates much more control of the disease.

At the beginning of the disease, in the first cases in February and March, a series of symptoms were described that seemed clear and common for this infection: fever, fatigue, dry cough or breathing difficulties. Little by little, as the pandemic evolved, this range was expanded and medical conditions in which diarrhea, sore throat or nasal congestion were detected were also included. An initial identifying key was the loss of smell and taste that occurred in many patients, but in this new wave that symptom has been losing strength, perhaps because the strain of the virus has been able to vary. There are also many studies underway - but at the moment few certainties - regarding whether 14 days of quarantine are sufficient to eliminate the threat of contagion and regarding how antibodies are lost and whether this leads to the elimination of immunity.

The proliferation of asymptomatic patients complicates disease control

Health workers explain that it is relatively common to suffer an infection without having external symptoms. The body's defenses continually battle against different pathogens without us being aware of it because the symptoms are still a “side effect” of this fight against the infection. It is estimated that there are even up to 15% of people who get the common flu without even realizing it, because their immune system is strong, effective and reacts so quickly that the patient can attribute any small illness to another cause. Sometimes the symptoms are so mild that they are not even noticeable and patients feel well or say they do, for example, so as not to lose a job as can happen in the case of temporary workers.

The confusion with the asymptomatic, however, is not something exclusive to Spain because serological sampling allows us to deduce that in New York, for example, one in five residents has been infected and the data on positives through analysis is much lower. Also in Italy or China, different studies have shown that 30% of those positive have not shown any symptoms, and a similar thing also happens in our country with seroprevalence studies, which indicate that we are still very far from the desired 'herd immunity'. '.

According to these data, in Aragon 4,8% of the population has suffered from the disease (at the national level the figure is 5,2%), but it must be taken into account that so far, in the worst months of the pandemic , only 20% of the cases, the most serious, were detected. Now it is also about testing the rest of the population and a clue as to how these outbreaks, apparently more harmless, are acting is given by the fact that the pressure in the ICUs has not increased excessively but more consultations are being registered in Primary Care and 061, which in just two weeks has increased its demand by more than 200%.