Were Fears of Asymptomatic Covid Spread Overblown?

Fears about silent spreaders of Covid — who suffer no symptoms but can pass the virus to others — were almost certainly overblown, according to a huge new study. MailOnline has more.

A study of nearly 30,000 people has found asymptomatic carriers are about 68% less likely to pass the virus on than those who get sick.
No 10 used concerns about asymptomatic spread to justify forcing Britons to obey lockdowns and wear masks.
They were thought to account for up to a third of all infections and many scientists claimed asymptomatic patients were just as infectious as the sick.
But a new global study spanning 42 countries, including the U.K. and U.S., found they were only responsible for as little as 14% of cases.
They also estimate that their overall risk of passing the virus to someone else “about two-thirds lower”.
Scientists claimed Covid’s ability to spread asymptomatically was one of the reasons for harsh social curbs.
During one of the national lockdowns in January 2021, the Government said about a third of people with Covid had no symptoms and urged people to “act like you’ve got it”.
Experts analysed data from 130 studies from 42 countries.
They involved 28,426 people who caught Covid between April 2020 and July 2021.
Of these patients, nearly 12,000 had an asymptomatic infection, having tested positive on a PCR but having suffered no symptoms.
All of the studies included the results of community screening programmes, contact tracing, and investigations into specific outbreaks like on cruise ships.
They found the ‘secondary attack rate’, how likely people infected with Covid are to pass the virus to others, was 68% lower for asymptomatic cases, compared to those with symptoms.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: You can read the paper In PLOS Medicine – “Occurrence and transmission potential of asymptomatic and presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections: Update of a living systematic review and meta-analysis” – here.

Stop Press 2: The investigation of the impact of lockdowns on Covid mortality published in Studies in Applied Economics that I posted about earlier today concludes that the lockdowns in March of last year saved fewer than 10,000 lives in Europe and the U.S. combined. MailOnline has more.