Coronavirus

(asked on 26th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their latest estimate of the proportion of people who have had COVID-19 who have presented with (1) a cough, (2) a temperature, (3) a loss of taste, (4) any such symptoms, and (5) no symptoms.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 17th December 2020

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates the percentages of people testing positive for COVID-19 who present with a range of symptoms in the community, which means that they necessarily exclude data from those testing positive in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings. It should be noted that the symptoms were self-reported, and not professionally diagnosed.

Around 5% of school-aged children presented with cough symptoms, whereas for those under 35 years old and those aged over 35 years old, the percentage for those presented with cough symptoms rose to between 10% and 15%.

In school-aged children, 15% of those who tested positive presented with fever symptoms and in adults, 15% and 20% did. The positivity rate in all age groups for those presenting with a loss of taste or smell is between 35% and 45%, however, there are wide confidence intervals within the date for school aged children. For all age groups, the rates of those reporting other symptoms is around 5%.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergency’s (SAGE) subgroup, Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational (SPI-M-O), do not have one consensus estimate for asymptomatic case proportions. The ONS’ COVID-19 Infection Study has estimated that approximately 55% of those individuals who test positive do not record evidence of symptoms at or around the time of the test. This does not mean these individuals will not go on to develop symptoms or had symptoms previously.

Other SAGE evidence has shown that there is wide variation in the estimated proportion of infections that are truly asymptomatic across different studies with the rapid review providing a pooled estimate, based on 22 studies, of 28% but with very wide confidence intervals.

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