The Union health ministry on Monday said 80 per cent of the COVID-19 patients are either asymptomatic or show mild symptoms and it is a major area of concern.
Addressing a media briefing on Monday, Joint Secretary at the Health Ministry, Lav Agarwal, said, “80 per cent cases are either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms as per the worldwide analysis. They can be tracked.”
“On the basis of worldwide analysis, 80 per cent of the COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic or show mild symptoms. Around 15 per cent patients turn into severe cases and 5 per cent may become critical,” he said.
The asymptomatic patients may pass on the infection to other people, it said, stressing on maintaining social distancing and infection prevention and control practices in hospital set ups.
Raman Gangakhedkar, head of infectious disease and epidemiology at the Indian Council of Medical Research A(ICMR) insisted that 80 out of 100 people do not show symptoms and therefore chances are that they might test positive.
He said this is the reason why people should follow the lockdown rules and maintain social distancing. “In this way, people will not come in close contact,” he said.
As of now, there is no plan to further widen the testing criteria, he said. Head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Dr Raman R Gangakhedkar said 80 out of 100 infected people do not show any symptoms.
As part of its revised strategy to fight the spread of COVID-19, the government has started testing people with fever, cough and sore throat in hotspots or cluster areas and evacuees centres.
Also, all hospitalised patients with severe acute respiratory illness, shortness of breath, fever and cough are being tested for COVID-19 infection. Direct and high-risk contacts of confirmed cases are also being tested once between day five and 14 of coming in his/her contact.
Besides, all asymptomatic individuals who undertook international travel and developed symptoms, all symptomatic contacts of laboratory-confirmed cases and all symptomatic health care workers were being tested for the infection as per the guidelines.
The apex body for biomedical research had recently revised its strategy to contain the spread of the virus more effectively and provide reliable diagnosis to all individuals meeting the inclusion criteria of COVID-19 testing.