Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2025
Monitoring Influenza Virus Survival Outside the Host Using Real-Time Cell Analysis
Published on: February 20, 2021
Reconstructing household transmission dynamics to estimate the infectiousness of asymptomatic influenza virus
Tim K Tsang1,2, Can Wang1, Vicky J Fang1
1WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
Abstract:
There has long been controversy over the potential for asymptomatic cases of the influenza virus to have the capacity for onward transmission, but recognition of asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 stimulates further research into this topic. Here, we develop a Bayesian methodology to analyze detailed data from a large cohort of 727 households and 2515 individuals in the 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) outbreak in Hong Kong to characterize household transmission dynamics and to estimate the relative infectiousness of asymptomatic versus symptomatic influenza cases. The posterior probability that asymptomatic cases [36% of cases; 95% credible interval (CrI): 32%, 40%] are less infectious than symptomatic cases is 0.82, with estimated relative infectiousness 0.57 (95% CrI: 0.11, 1.54). More data are required to strengthen our understanding of the contribution of asymptomatic cases to the spread of influenza.
