Hyderabad: In a shocking revelation China has said that a maximum number of coronavirus cases are asymptomatic.
According to a report published in a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal The British Medical Journal, four out of five coronavirus infected do not show any illness.
Many experts and researchers believe that the asymptomatic nature of coronavirus is the main cause of its wide-spread.
Out of 166 cases reported on April 1 in China, 130 cases were asymptomatic, the country's National Health Commission said.
Meanwhile, Beijing has imposed travel bans and conducted rigorous testing of Chinese returning home to stop further outbreak of the virus.
"The findings are very, very, very important,” said Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford.
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"The sample is small, and more data will become available. Also, it’s not clear exactly how these cases were identified. But let’s just say they are generalisable. And even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, What the hell are we locking down for?" Jefferson said.
According to a report published on South China Morning Post, Beijing has so far reported 43,000 cases of asymptomatic infection through contact tracing.
