Analysis in characteristics of asymptomatic infection patients with coronavirus disease 2019 in Yangzhou City of Jiangsu Province

Objective To analyze epidemiological characteristics of the asymptomatic infection patients with coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)in Yangzhou City. Methods The asymptomatic infection patients with COVID-19 from 21 January to 29 February 2020 in Yangzhou City were selected as subjects, and their epidemiological materials, laboratory test results and exposure condition were collected. Results Totally 14 asymptomatic infection cases with COVID-19 were enrolled in this study, their average age was 38.7 years old, the mean time from last exposure to positive result of nucleic acid test was 13.8 days, 92.9% of them were infected after exposure to the confirmed cases, and 85.7% of them were the relatives or family members of the confirmed cases. Conclusion Most of asymptomatic infection cases with COVID-19 are young adults, and they are mainly infected due to close contacts of confirmed cases after screening and cluster epidemic investigation. Timely screening and sampling for close contacts can reduce the spread of epidemics due to the asymptomatic infection cases with COVID-19, and reduce the occurrence of severe and critical cases. For the asymptomatic infection cases with COVID-19, a health monitoring of 2 to 4 weeks should be implemented after release of medical observation.