Chinese Researchers: "Asymptomatic and Hidden COVID-19 Cases Are Increasingly Stronger"

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Chinese researchers have announced findings that as the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) continues to spread, the virus is becoming increasingly covert, with symptoms that are less apparent externally. There is concern that if the typical symptoms such as high fever and muscle pain, which have appeared in confirmed patients so far, decrease in frequency, it will become more difficult to diagnose confirmed cases.

According to Chinese internet media Pengpai on the 6th, medical staff at Wuhan University People's Hospital published a paper titled "Caution: Changes in Clinical Characteristics of Hospitalized Patients with Novel Coronavirus" on the academic preprint site SSRN. In this paper, with Professor Zhang Zhan, who also participated in the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic control, as the corresponding author, the research team stated that depending on the timing of hospitalization, patients' COVID-19 symptoms are evolving in a direction where they become less apparent and more covert.

The researchers divided 89 patients hospitalized between January 16 and 29 into two groups and compared their clinical characteristics. As a result, they found noticeable clinical differences between 31 patients hospitalized from January 16 to 22 (Group 1) and 58 patients hospitalized from January 23 to 29 (Group 2).

In Group 1, the rates of typical COVID-19 symptoms such as cough, sputum, high fever, and fatigue were 51.6%, 32.3%, 67.7%, and 41.9%, respectively. However, in Group 2, these rates dropped significantly to 41.4%, 6.9%, 32.8%, and 13.8%, respectively. Within just one week, externally visible symptoms largely disappeared. The researchers pointed out, "Through the transmission and generational changes of COVID-19, changes have appeared in the clinical characteristics of patients," and "the initial symptoms of the latest patients have begun to show stronger covert characteristics."

The research team stated that this indicates COVID-19 is gradually evolving to resemble a common influenza virus, causing no symptoms and remaining dormant in the human body for extended periods. Accordingly, they emphasized that identifying COVID-19 patients will become more difficult and that studying the differences in clinical symptoms of hospitalized patients by period is an urgent task.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.