The first case of coronavirus being spread by a person with no symptoms has been found
Updated
As the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak continues to spread in China, researchers have found that people carrying the virus but not showing symptoms may be able to infect others. If infected people can spread 2019-nCoV while asymptomatic, it could be harder to trace contacts and contain the epidemic, which is already a global health emergency (SN: 1/30/20).
An unnamed Shanghai woman passed the virus to business colleagues in Germany before she showed signs of the illness, doctors reported January 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The woman had attended a business meeting at the headquarters of the auto supplier Webasto in Stockdorf on January 20 and flew back to China on January 22. She developed a fever and chest pain about eight hours after arriving back in Shanghai.
“This is the first moment I recognized getting sick,” the woman told researchers during a telephone call from her hospital room in China on February 5, according to a detailed timeline published online February 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine. She tested positive for the virus on January 26.
Meanwhile, one of her German colleagues fell ill on January 24 with a fever, sore throat, chills and muscle aches. His illness was brief, and he returned to work on January 27, the same day that the woman informed the company she carried the virus. Nasal swabs and sputum, or phlegm, samples from the man contained high levels of the novel coronavirus even though his symptoms had passed. More testing is needed to determine whether virus particles left after recovery from the illness are infectious, the researchers noted.