MADISON, WI (WTAQ) — We’re learning more about the COVID-19 Pandemic as more data becomes available.
Aggressive testing in Brown County and elsewhere has revealed that many Coronavirus patients never actually show symptoms of the virus. Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at UW Health in Madison says that’s making it hard to know the true extent of the outbreak.
“It does seem to be the case that a considerable proportion of people will not get symptoms, so there’s no way to know [if they’re infected] unless you test them,” Safdar told WTAQ.
Safdar says while with many respiratory illnesses, including other coronaviruses, mild symptoms are common, it’s not typical for a repiratory virus to result in no symptoms.
“I think… completely no symptoms is a little less common,” Safdar explained. “But often times people will have very mild symptoms to the point where they don’t even recognize that they have them.”
It’s likely we won’t know the true extent of the virus until wide-scale antibody testing is available to see who was infected. Antibody testing in New York City revealed as many as 14% of the population there may have already had the virus, many of whom showed no symptoms.
“If we were to do that same study in Wisconsin, I don’t think we’d see the same results just because our overall prevalence is not like anything New York City experienced, ” Safdar said. “But, there will undoubtedly be many people with positive antibody results who had no idea that they had it.”
According to Safdar, orders enacted by states across the country, such as Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers ‘Safer-at-Home’ order, have largely allowed the United States to avoid stressing national healthcare infrastructure, like what happened in Italy and China.
“[The orders] did help in the beginning to flatten the trajectory of the virus in Wisconsin,” Safdar said Tuesday. “I think that reopening slowly, carefully, and being prepared to then go back to it if it looks like cases are rising to an…uncontrollable number.”
Re-instating ‘Safer-at-Home’ after the state reopens might prove a tall order. After Governor Evers extended the order until May 26th, the legislature, along with several business groups, filed suit to overturn it. Business groups have argued that small businesses won’t be able to survive a continued prolonged shutdown.
A second, seasonal wave of COVID-19 isn’t out of the question, either. Safdar says that’s common with other respiratory infections, so it’s possible we will be dealing with COVID-19 for some time until a vaccine is complete or broad herd immunity is achieved–that would require most of the population to become infected…and that would be a ways away. The number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the United States surpassed the million case mark on Tuesday, but that still only accounts for 0.3% of the total population.
