Fauci reiterates ease of coronavirus transmission without symptoms in wake of WHO confusion

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci listens as President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus on May 15 at the White House. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Perhaps the most novel thing about this novel coronavirus is how insidiously it spreads, and on Wednesday Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated that people without symptoms can spread the virus.

The bottom line, he and other experts said, is that wearing masks and practicing physical distancing will help stem the spread of the potentially lethal virus.

A day after the World Health Organization sowed confusion by appearing to imply that asymptomatic transmission is not as easy as first thought, Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that “was not correct.”

Fauci, the top infectious disease specialist in the U.S., and other experts doubled down on the message that this virus is very contagious and can be transmitted by infected people who aren’t showing symptoms — whether they will go on to develop illness or not.

Given the abundance of evidence that 25% to 45% of infected people don’t have symptoms, combined with how far and fast the virus has spread even with protocols in place, it’s clear that someone doesn’t have to be outright ill with COVID-19 to give it to someone else, Fauci said Wednesday, according to CNN.

“We know from epidemiological studies they can transmit to someone who is uninfected even when they're without symptoms,” Fauci said. “So to make a statement to say that’s a rare event was not correct.”

The WHO on Monday quoted two small studies in which detailed contact tracing yielded few or no infections among those who did not exhibit symptoms. On Tuesday, the WHO’s main expert clarified that the results could not be globalized. But confusion was already spreading.

Fauci on Wednesday further emphasized that both presymptomatic people and asymptomatic people can transmit the virus. Presymptomatic are those who are infected and at some point will get sick. Asymptomatic are those who will never show symptoms. And “paucisymptomatic” people are those who will go on to develop mild symptoms, Babak Javid, a principal investigator at Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing and an infectious disease consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals, told CNN.

Indeed, this is the very aspect of coronavirus that makes the pandemic his “worst nightmare,” Fauci said.

All three types of carriers are likely to be “shedding” the virus in invisible droplets while speaking, or rubbing their nose or mouth and then touching something that others will touch, CNN said.

“Both asymptomatic AND pre-symptomatic spread [are a] huge problem for controlling disease, because [of] folks shedding virus while asymptomatic,” tweeted Dr. Ashish K. Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “Pre-symptomatic has one advantage: You can use contact tracing to find folks they infected. But that doesn’t help prevent pre-symptomatic spread.”