Coronavirus Watch.

Global Statistics

There were 136,757 new cases recorded yesterday to bring the total number of confirmed cases to 7,597,301. Brazil recorded the highest number of new cases as there were 30,465 reported cases.

The country was the only country to record deaths over 1000, recording 1,261 deaths. 

India is now part of the top countries with the highest number confirmed cases, after having reported 11,128 new cases to bring the total number of cases to 298,283.

The death toll is relatively low as compared to its peers in the top five.

South Africa now has 58,568 confirmed cases after recording 3,147 cases yesterday. They also recorded 74 new deaths to bring the total death toll to 1,284 and they have 33,252 recoveries. 

Nigeria recorded 681 new cases yesterday to bring the total number of cases to 14,554, with 387 deaths after 5 were recorded yesterday. The country has conducted 85,375 tests countrywide. 

17 new cases were recorded in Mozambique to bring the total number of cases to 489 and 343 active cases after 144 cases were reported to have recovered. 

Zimbabwean cases are now at 332 after 12 more tested positive or the Covid-19 pandemic; and 51 cases were reported to have recovered with the death toll remains at 4. 

WHO clarifies comments on asymptomatic spread of Covid-19: We don’t actually have that answer yet

A top World Health Organization official clarified on Tuesday that scientists have not determined yet how frequently people with asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 pass the disease on to others, a day after suggesting that such spread is “very rare.”

The clarification comes after the WHO’s original comments incited strong pushback from outside public health experts, who suggested the agency had erred, or at least miscommunicated, when it said people who didn’t show symptoms were unlikely to spread the virus.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the Covid-19 pandemic, made it very clear Tuesday that the actual rates of asymptomatic transmission aren’t yet known.

“The majority of transmission that we know about is that people who have symptoms transmit the virus to other people through infectious droplets,” Van Kerkhove said.

“But there are a subset of people who don’t develop symptoms, and to truly understand how many people don’t have symptoms, we don’t actually have that answer yet.”

Van Kerkhove’s remarks on Tuesday came at a WHO question-and-answer session aimed at explaining what was known and unknown about how the virus spreads.

Some of the confusion boiled down to the details of what an asymptomatic infection actually is, and the different ways the term is used. While some cases of Covid-19 are fully asymptomatic, sometimes the word is also used to describe people who haven’t started showing symptoms yet, when they are presymptomatic.

Research has shown that people become infectious before they start feeling sick, during that presymptomatic period.

To some, it came across as if the WHO was suggesting that people without symptoms weren’t driving spread.
Some studies, however, have estimated that people without symptoms (whether truly asymptomatic or presymptomatic) could be responsible for up to half of the spread, which is why the virus has been so difficult to contain.

Isolating people who are sick, for example, does not prevent the possibility they already passed the virus on to others. Some modeling studies have assumed quite widespread asymptomatic transmission. Stat News

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12/06/2020

(Source: Kitco)