Occurrence and #transmission potential of asymptomatic and presymptomatic #SARS-CoV-2 infections: A living systematic review and meta-analysis
▻https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003346
Background
There is disagreement about the level of asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We conducted a living systematic review and meta-analysis to address three questions: (1) Amongst people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2, what proportion does not experience symptoms at all during their infection? (2) Amongst people with SARS-CoV-2 infection who are asymptomatic when diagnosed, what proportion will develop symptoms later? (3) What proportion of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is accounted for by people who are either asymptomatic throughout infection or presymptomatic?
Methods and findings
[..,] We included a total of 94 studies. The overall estimate of the proportion of people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 and remain asymptomatic throughout infection was 20 % (95% confidence interval [CI] 17–25) with a prediction interval of 3%–67% in 79 studies that addressed this review question. There was some evidence that biases in the selection of participants influence the estimate. In seven studies of defined populations screened for SARS-CoV-2 and then followed, 31% (95% CI 26%–37%, prediction interval 24%–38%) remained asymptomatic. The proportion of people that is presymptomatic could not be summarised, owing to heterogeneity. The secondary attack rate was lower in contacts of people with asymptomatic infection than those with symptomatic infection (relative risk 0.35, 95% CI 0.10–1.27). Modelling studies fit to data found a higher proportion of all SARS-CoV-2 infections resulting from transmission from presymptomatic individuals than from asymptomatic individuals . Limitations of the review include that most included studies were not designed to estimate the proportion of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections and were at risk of selection biases; we did not consider the possible impact of false negative RT-PCR results, which would underestimate the proportion of asymptomatic infections; and the database does not include all sources.
Conclusions
The findings of this living systematic review suggest that most people who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 will not remain asymptomatic throughout the course of the infection. The contribution of presymptomatic and asymptomatic infections to overall SARS-CoV-2 transmission means that combination prevention measures, with enhanced hand hygiene, masks, testing tracing, and isolation strategies and social distancing, will continue to be needed.