Researchers looked at 95 studies from January 2020 to February 2021 consisting of nearly 30 million people in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa. More than 60% of confirmed COVID-19 cases among people under 20 were asymptomatic; nearly 50% in people 20 to 39; about 32% in people 40 to 59, and about 33% in those over 60.
While 40% of COVID-19 infections overall were asymptomatic, they represented only .25% of the tested population. But health experts say it’s still a cause for concern. It’s also likely an underestimation as testing was not widely available in many countries during the study’s timeframe.
“A quarter of a percent of the tested population ending asymptomatic, that doesn’t seem like a very large amount,” said Mark Cameron, infectious disease immunologist as Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “However, when you multiply that by the hundreds of millions of people around the world, that’s a significant amount of people transmitting the virus that’s falling through the cracks.”
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