Study: Asymptomatic COVID-19 patients responsible for half the country’s cases

New cases are surging in at least 32 states, and some fear lack of social distancing during the July 4th weekend may cause those numbers to keep climbing.

News 12 Staff

Jul 7, 2020, 12:41 PM

Updated 1,549 days ago

Share:

There are more than 2.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.
A new study published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people have be responsible for half of the country's COVID-19 cases.
Medical experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, warn the country is still heading in the wrong direction.
Johns Hopkins University reports the number of known cases in the United States doubles roughly every month.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and her husband are among the latest to test positive for the virus.

"This is scary. We've done all the things that we thought we should do, and for us to test positive I think really speaks to how easily this virus is spread," says Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.
"About 20% of people will need hospitalization. About 20% of those people will need critical care. And if you end up on a ventilator, 80% of those people will die," says Dr. Jonathan Reiner, former White House medical adviser.
New cases are surging in at least 32 states and some fear lack of social distancing during the July 4 weekend may cause those numbers to keep climbing.

"We're soon going to get to the point where everybody in the United States knows somebody personally who's very sick with COVID-19. That is going to have an incredibly destabilizing effect on the country," says Dr. Peter Hotez, of Baylor College of Medicine.
Now some medical experts say the coronavirus has the ability to float and can be transmitted by air droplets.