Research is messy and sometimes it’s wrong. But science is also self-correcting. That’s what happened after a report in the New England Journal of Medicine mistakenly concluded that a woman from Shanghai had spread the coronavirus to colleagues in Germany before experiencing symptoms herself.
Can the coronavirus (2019-nCOV) be spread by people without symptoms?
It’s been a controversial question ever since a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last week claimed that a woman who was “asymptomatic” triggered a chain of infections near Munich.
It was a surprising observation because coronaviruses are believed to be spread primarily by people who are already sick, through droplets generated by coughing and sneezing.
The original report said the woman did not show symptoms until later.
“During her stay, she had been well with no sign or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China,” the authors wrote.
Because the report was published in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, it immediately raised questions about how to manage people exposed to the virus.
But the report was wrong.
The case study was based on faulty information because the original authors did not speak directly to the patient, according to a news report in the journal Science.
The NEJM report was signed by 17 doctors from several German hospitals and research institutes. The Science article quotes one author, Michael Hoelscher of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Medical Centre, who said the information about the asymptomatic visitor came from the infected German patients.
Since then, German health officials have spoken directly with the woman from Shanghai. She told them she was already feeling ill when she met with German colleagues near Munich.
The woman had “mild, unspecific symptoms” while in Germany and took medication to