The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on Saturday that it had begun surveys in order to find out how many people in the US have been contaminated with the novel coronavirus. Some health officials said that about 25 percent of the infected people have no symptoms while carrying the virus. Here are some questions asked by people and the answers given by officials with regard to COVID-19, as per WPXI.
Researchers Answered The Most Common Coronavirus Questions
Could I have had COVID-19 in the past few months and not known it?
It is possible that people get infected but show no symptoms. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, said that about 25 percent who have been contaminated with the coronavirus could never show any symptoms.
“We have pretty much confirmed” that “a significant number of individuals that are infected actually remain asymptomatic,” Redfield told NPR last week.
As per the CDC, manifestations of the virus could be dry cough, fatigue, low-grade fever, body aches, nasal congestion, and sore throat. Moreover, other symptoms, such as the loss of senses of taste and smell, diarrhea, and conjunctivitis, have also been observed.
If I had no symptoms but had the virus, was I contagious?
Researchers believe that the people who have no symptoms can spread the coronavirus also. “There’s significant transmission by people not showing symptoms,” Stephen Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, said.
Moreover, Redfield also stated that it seems that people infected with COVID-19 are contagious about 48 hours before the symptoms appear. “This helps explain how rapidly this virus continues to spread across the country because we have asymptomatic transmitters, and we have individuals who are transmitting 48 hours before they become symptomatic,” Redfield said.
If I’ve had it, can I get it again?
Some scientists say that being infected with the virus and recovering from it might give a person immunity to it for a while.
“It is reasonable to predict we will have some immunity. To say you will have lifelong [coronavirus immunity]? We just don’t know yet,” Frances Lund, professor, and chair of the department of microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham told NBC News. “But I think it’s a reasonable conclusion that you will have immunity for the rest of this season.”
