A young woman from Wuhan, China visited five family members, who all contracted novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the first-ever do ented case of an asymptomatic carrier with normal chest CT imaging results, researchers found.
The woman, age 20, was afebrile and had no respiratory symptoms, including cough and sore throat, no gastrointestinal symptoms, no significant abnormalities on chest CT imaging, and no laboratory abnormalities.
Yet, she tested positive for the novel coronavirus, reported Meiyun Wang, MD, PhD, of Henan Provincial People's Hospital in Henan, China, and colleagues.
More concerning may be that the incubation period for the woman was do ented as 19 days, outside of the long-held belief about a 14-day incubation period, the authors wrote in a research letter in JAMA.
In fact, they sounded a note of warning if what they discovered in this case turns out to be true elsewhere:
"The sequence of events suggests that the coronavirus may have been transmitted by the asymptomatic carrier ... If the findings in this report of presumed transmission by an asymptomatic carrier are replicated, the prevention of COVID-19 infection would prove challenging," the team wrote.