You could have been spreading the omicron variant without knowing it, study says

While the omicron subvariant BA.5 has revealed itself to be the most infectious and immune-suppressing iteration of COVID-19 yet, scientists have long known that many cases of COVID-19, regardless of variation, are complete. Kind of asymptomatic. But how often the average person was unknowingly contracting COVID was not known for certain.

Now, a new study shows the extent to which people can spread the Omicron strain of COVID-19 without even realizing it. Because Omicron infections are often asymptomatic, it was long believed that individuals infected with Omicron could inadvertently transmit the bug simply because they were not aware they had been infected.

As recently published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, it makes clear that more than half of people who contracted the Omicron strain of COVID-19 were asymptomatic – and thus unaware that they had ever been infected. .

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Hospital looked at blood samples submitted by 2,479 healthcare workers and patients during the period just before and during Omicron’s initial boom. Within that group, they found 210 individuals who had recently been infected with the Omicron type based on SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood. Those participants were invited to provide periodic health status updates. Soon, it was revealed that only 44% of infected participants knew they had the SARS-CoV-2 virus in their bodies.

An explanation of why 56% of infected participants did not know, seems clear from a key statistic: only 10% reported having any adverse symptoms, and they generally attributed them to a cold or other type of infection.

Want more health and science stories delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to The Vulgar Scientist, the salon’s weekly newsletter.

Salon reached out to Susan Cheng, MD, MPH — a corresponding author of the study and director of the Research Institute on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Schmidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai — to find out the extent to which unintentional omicron carriers cause aging. has fueled the pandemic.

“It’s hard to say,” Cheng told Salon by email, “that it’s hard to capture complete or comprehensive data on the state of infection in a given community or population at a given point in time, and then at multiple points in time. period” that would be needed “to measure how fast a virus is spreading and what proportion of the spread is between or among unknown people.” Still, Cheng pointed out that “our study and other data suggest that unrecognized infections played a major role in the spread of the virus throughout the pandemic.”

Sandy Y. Joung, MHDS, an investigator at Cedars-Sinai and the study’s first author, expressed a similar view in a statement about their research.

“The findings of our study provide evidence that uncontrolled infections can increase virus transmission,” Jong explained. “Low levels of infection awareness have contributed to the rapid spread of Omicron.”

When Cheng was asked whether, based on his research, he believed people should try to get tested for Omicron even if they were asymptomatic, the doctor called it a “good question” and Said that in other studies as well as their own, “it is very appropriate to conduct rapid antigen testing in situations after there is a known or highly suspected risk for someone with COVID.”

To get a better understanding of omicron infections, the study authors said they would need to study a more diverse group of patients than the participants in this study and the same occupational area as a whole (in this case). in, health care). ,

Cheng explained, “It often requires a large health organization or organization of a large number of people to recruit and enroll large and diverse groups of individuals in a study through some sort of structured effort. ” Not just a single point of engagement, but continuing engagement again and again to follow up on how they are doing with antibody measures and health status over time.”

Cedars-Sinai doctors aren’t the only ones to warn that a silent wave of Omicron infections is putting the public at risk. Earlier this week, Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Cheryl Bettygole expressed concern that this would happen when announcing that it would be the first major US city to restore an indoor mask mandate.

“If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections is followed by a wave of hospitalizations, and then a wave of deaths, it will be too late for many of our residents,” Bettygole explained. “This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic, to put on our masks until we know more about the seriousness of this new version.”