Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 20) – There may be people who have the virus but are not exhibiting any symptoms, like coughs and fever, continuing on and posing a risk to the community.
Public health epidemiologist Dr. Troy Gepte said that testing asymptomatic individuals is an important step to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
“They might be spreading the virus unknowingly,” Gepte said.
Gepte cited data from other countries that found a big portion of the population infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic.
“Based on recent considerations from other countries, they have seen that [in] countries where they did mass testing, main portion of the population affected are asymptomatic, around 50% of those tested are asymptomatic,” he said.
In Valenzuela City, seven persons under monitoring tested positive of the virus last week, despite showing no symptoms.
“A pathologist said, one person can contaminate another 16. You can imagine, yung 7 is a multiplier of 16. So it’s still very dangerous,” Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian said.
Gepte said examining even those who have no symptoms is essential in getting a more accurate data on the extent of infection in a community.
This will help officials trace more people who might have been exposed to asymptomatic carriers, determine the number of quarantine facilities needed, and the direction of other measures in stopping the transmission of the virus.
“If we test them late, we might not be able to know ano ang [what the] prevalence or proportion of the community that got the infection,” Gepte said.
“The good thing about knowing ilan ang [how many are] infected, we can better inform our public health officials, local government units on how they are able to implement the quarantine procedures in the locality,” he added.
Mayor Gatchalian said the Department of Health’s Regional Epidemiological Surveillance Unit informed him on Monday that persons under monitoring will be examined under the localized mass testing.
According to the Department of Health, priority for mass testing are:
Class 1: severe and critical cases
Class 2: mild symptoms among vulnerable group (elderly, with pre existing conditions, high-risk pregnant and health care workers)
Next on the priority list are:
Class 3: patients with mild symptoms and have history of travel or exposure to an infected person
Class 4: those who are asymptomatic but have history of travel and exposure to an infected person
