Title:
Asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19
Authors:
Allyson M Pollock, Professor of Public Health
James Lancaster, Independent Researcher
Published:
BMJ, 2020; 371 (published 21 December 2020)
From the article:
Unusually in disease management, a positive test result is the sole criterion for a covid-19 case. Normally, a test is a support for clinical diagnosis, not a substitute. This lack of clinical oversight means we know very little about the proportions of people with positive results who are truly asymptomatic throughout the course of their infection and the proportions who are paucisymptomatic (subclinical), presymptomatic (go on to develop symptoms later), or post-infection (with viral RNA fragments still detectable from an earlier infection).