A Chinese study published in an American medical journal found that coronavirus patients who showed no symptoms were contagious for shorter periods of time than symptomatic patients.
The study of 78 patients admitted to the Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, between December 24, 2019 and February 24, 2020 showed that asymptomatic patients shed the virus for a median of 8 days while symptomatic patients shed the virus for a median of 19 days.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open. Cases were identified through government screening, which also required all close contacts of people infected with the virus also be tested, according to the study. (RELATED: Fauci Softens Predictions For Coronavirus Second Wave — Not An ‘Inevitability’)
All of the patients in the study were confirmed positive for coronavirus, and 58% of patients had symptoms while 42% did not.
Patients were given the same treatments by the same healthcare workers, and most patients who reported symptoms experienced fever, fatigue, and a dry cough.
Asymptomatic patients were more likely to be younger and female, and had less damage to the liver, less consumption of key immune cells known as CD4 lymphocytes, and experienced little damage to the lungs.
“Although patients who were asymptomatic experienced less harm to themselves, they may have been unaware of their disease and therefore not isolated themselves or sought treatment, or they may have been overlooked by health care workers and thus unknowingly transmitted the virus to others,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers also highlighted the importance of identifying and isolating patients who are asymptomatic to stop the transmission of the virus.
The study’s findings are similar to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention models that estimate 35% of people infected with the virus show no symptoms.