Tests to be carried out to find ‘ghost spreaders’

Meltem Özgenç - ISTANBUL

Turkey will conduct tests to trace “ghost spreaders,” who have the coronavirus but do not show any symptoms of the COVID-19 disease, according to Professor Ateş Kara, a member of the country’s Science Board.

“Data suggest that some 30 percent of the coronavirus cases in the countries around the world are those “ghost spreaders,” which mean asymptomatic virus carriers. If we do have 122,000 cases in Turkey, then there might be some 36,000 out there who carry the virus or have the disease without showing any symptoms,” Kara said.

He noted that Iceland tested everyone in the country and found that around a third of the population had the disease with no symptoms.

“A later study from China and data from other countries show similar results, which allow us to make some estimates about Turkey,” Kara explained.

“That is why we urge everybody to wear face masks but putting on a mask is no substitute for social distancing.”

Kara noted that it would be impossible to track all those ghost spreaders, but newly developed tests produce more accurate results.

“We cannot carry out the tests on the entire populations, however, we try to find those ghost spreaders by run tests on certain sample groups. From now on, tests will be conducted in crowded workplaces,” he said.

Turkey uses what it calls the “filiation” method to screen the chain of contacts in infectious diseases. If somebody tests positive, close contacts are also tested. There are more than 4,000 filiation teams tracing people that may have contracted the virus.