High Asymptomatic Carriage With the Omicron Variant in South Africa

Overview

Journal Clin Infect Dis

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Infectious Diseases

Date 2022 Mar 30

PMID 35353885

Authors

Nigel Garrett

Asa Tapley

Jessica Andriesen

Ishen Seocharan

Leigh H Fisher

Lisa Bunts

Nicole Espy

Carole L Wallis

April Kaur Randhawa

Maurine D Miner

Nzeera Ketter

Margaret Yacovone

Ameena Goga

Yunda Huang

John Hural

Philip Kotze

Linda Gail Bekker

Glenda E Gray

Lawrence Corey

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We report a 23% asymptomatic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS CoV-2) Omicron carriage rate in participants being enrolled into a clinical trial in South Africa, 15-fold higher than in trials before Omicron. We also found lower CD4 + T-cell counts in persons with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) strongly correlated with increased odds of being SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive.

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