What Percentage of People are Asymptomatic?

by | Coronavirus - COVID-19, Coronavirus - Symptoms

What Percentage of People are Asymptomatic?

It’s not really known what percentage of people are asymptomatic with COVID 19, but it is significant.

And when you talk about asymptomatic, there are two ways of looking at it. One is presymptomatic. In other words, you don’t have symptoms for maybe five or six days, and then the symptoms come out. And that is, you’re not symptomatic during that time but it’s really pre-symptomatic.

And then asymptomatic right through. It’s not known for sure what proportion of people. The reason it’s not known for sure is that many asymptomatic people don’t get tested. So we don’t know really, if you like, the total number of people who are truly infected versus the number of people who are who have got symptoms.

So we don’t know that, but it is a considerable percentage.

Dr Norman Swan, Physician and Journalist