On Monday, an official with the World Health Organization said the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 “appears to be rare.”
“We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing – they are following asymptomatic cases, they are following contacts and they are not finding secondary transmission onward, it’s very rare,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said during a news briefing. “Much of that is not published in the literature.”
Also in the briefing, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the pandemic was worsening globally, despite the situation improving in Europe. Tedros said most of the cases reported to the U.N. health agency on Sunday came from 10 countries in the Americas and South Asia. 136,000 cases were reported on Sunday, which is the biggest number so far.
“At the same time, we’re encouraged that several countries around the world are seeing positive signs,” Tedros said. “In these countries, the biggest threat now is complacency.”
In April, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would halt funding to the “China-centric” WHO due to claims that the organization mismanaged the handling of the coronavirus as well as acted to cover it up. A month later, the President restored partial funding, saying the U.S. would pay equal to what China is paying.
The WHO also faced criticism for ending their study on hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 after two medical journals found negative impacts from the drug. The finding contradicted previous studies, but the two journals were later retracted when it was determined that they were based on false data.
