December 2020
Michael Haynes

ANALYSIS

WUHAN, China, December 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A study of almost 10 million people in Wuhan, China, found that asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 did not occur at all, thus undermining the need for lockdowns, which are built on the premise of the virus being unwittingly spread by infectious, asymptomatic people.

Published in November in the scientific journal Nature Communications, the paper was compiled by 19 scientists, mainly from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, but also from scientific institutions across China as well as in the U.K. and Australia. It focused on the residents of Wuhan, ground zero for COVID-19, where 9,899,828 people took part in a screening program between May 14 and June 1, which provided clear results as to the possibility of any asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

Asymptomatic transmission has been the underlying justification of lockdowns enforced all across the world. The most recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) still states that the virus “can be spread by people who do not have symptoms.” In fact, the CDC claimed that asymptomatic people “are estimated to account for more than 50 percent of transmissions.”

U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock also promoted this message, explaining that the concept of asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 led to the U.K. advocating masks and referring to the “problem of asymptomatic transmission.”

However, the new study in Nature Communications, titled “Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly 10 million residents of Wuhan, China,” debunked the concept of asymptomatic transmission.

It stated that out of the nearly 10 million people in the study, “300 asymptomatic cases” were found. Contact tracing was then carried out and of those 300, no cases of COVID-19 were detected in any of them. “A total of 1,174 close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases were traced, and they all tested negative for the COVID-19.”

Both the asymptomatic patients and their contacts were placed in isolation for two weeks, and after the fortnight, the results remained the same. “None of detected positive cases or their close contacts became symptomatic or newly confirmed with COVID-19 during the isolation period.”

Further evidence showed that “virus cultures” in the positive and repositive asymptomatic cases were all negative, “indicating no ‘viable virus' in positive cases detected in this study.”

Ages of those found to be asymptomatic ranged between 10 and 89, with the asymptomatic positive rate being “lowest in children or adolescents aged 17 and below” and highest rate found among people older than 60.

The study also made the realization that due to a weakening of the virus itself, “newly infected persons were more likely to be asymptomatic and with a lower viral load than earlier infected cases.”

These results are not without precedent. In June, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, shed doubt upon asymptomatic transmission. Speaking at a press conference, Van Kerkhove explained, “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.”