A song of hope

Brimful of Asha describes the Indian film industry, in particular Asha Bhosle, whose name means hope in Hindi, and whose Bollywood songs were filled with messages of hope. So does the manuscript by Ra and colleagues (see page 61) fill us with hope for 2021? They describe 213 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2, of who 19% had no symptoms. After a median of 2 weeks approximately half of asymptomatic patients and two-thirds of symptomatic cases were still positive by PCR and there was no significant difference between the levels of a range viral genes in either asymptomatic or symptomatic people. So this offers hope to a large number people that even if they get infected they may not develop any symptoms even 2 weeks after becoming positive. However, it also highlights the risk that asymptomatic people could in theory transmit SARS-CoV-2 as their viral levels in the upper airways were almost the same as those with symptoms. So here we have to disagree with Cornershop, and we do care …