Two-thirds of virus cases outside China have gone undetected – modeling
The leading academic group modeling coronavirus epidemiology estimated on Friday afternoon that II about two-thirds of Covid-19 cases exported from mainland China has remained undetected worldwide, potentially resulting in multiple chains of as yet undetected human-to-human transmission outside China.
That implies there are already more than 3,000 cases in the rest of the world. The modeling group is led by Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London. In response to the study, Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Nottingham, said:
With each new finding of how this virus is behaving – large proportions of people with mild or no symptoms, frequent detection of the virus in the nose and throat irrespective of disease severity – we should start to accept that this outbreak will be incredibly difficult to control using standard public health measures, such as isolation of cases and contact tracing… I d don’t think too many people would argue that we are likely to see continued spread around the world and the eventual emergence of what will be the fifth commonly circulating human coronavirus infection.