01/11/2022

South African Studies Suggest Omicron Has Higher 'Asymptomatic Carriage'

This could explain why it has spread so rapidly

Preliminary findings from two South African clinical trials suggest the Omicron coronavirus variant has a much higher rate of "asymptomatic carriage" than earlier variants, which could explain why it has spread so rapidly across the globe.

The studies - one of which was carried out when Omicron infections were surging in South Africa last month and another which resampled participants around the same time - found a far greater number of people tested positive for the coronavirus but were not showing symptoms compared to previous trials.

In the Ubuntu study evaluating the efficacy of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine in people living with HIV, 31 percent of 230 participants undergoing screening tested positive, with all 56 samples available for sequencing analysis verified to be Omicron.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Reuters.