Many experts are increasingly pointing to Iceland as a country that might provide key information about how to combat the coronavirus pandemic. While the small country of just 360,000 people has closed secondary and tertiary schools and has banned gatherings of 100 people or more, it has thus far avoided the widespread “lockdowns” that are economically devastating many countries, including the United States, which has already suffered historic unemployment amid an increasing number of government-mandated shutdowns.
Some of the most helpful of the data coming out of Iceland are the results of its widespread COVID-19 testing, which includes a large percentage of people who are asymptomatic, showing no symptoms of the virus. According to the latest numbers, Iceland has found that as much has half of the people who have been infected by coronavirus may be asymptomatic.
“As of Tuesday, Iceland had tested more than 17,900 people for the virus — nearly 5% of its population,” CNN reported Wednesday. “And while its National University Hospital tests people who are high-risk or show symptoms, nearly half of Iceland’s tests have been conducted by biopharma company deCODE Genetics, focusing on the wider population. Crucially, deCODE’s ‘screening program accepts everybody who is not showing symptoms and not currently in quarantine,’ Iceland’s Directorate of Health said in a statement, adding that Iceland-based company was doing it on the behalf of the Chief Epidemiologist and the health agency.”
“Our number one priority is to limit the damage of the pandemic to the health of our citizens and to our social and economic infrastructure,” Iceland’s Minister of Health Svandís Svavarsdóttir said in a statement when deCODE’s role in testing was first announced. “We have followed the policy of adhering to the best available advice of the medical community in Iceland. The large scale testing by deCODE Genetics among the general population will hopefully inform improved decision making throughout the current crisis, and more importantly, serve a useful purpose for how the world prepares for similar events in the future.”
The minister’s prediction about the importance of deCODE’s testing is proving true. “The results of the additional tests performed by deCODE have given an indication that efforts to limit the spread of the virus have been effective so far,” Iceland’s government said in an update last week. That general testing of the population “will continue to elicit a much clearer picture of the actual spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Iceland.”
The private biopharma company, which was found by Dr. Kári Stefánsson and is a subsidiary of U.S. biotech company Amgen, has tested around 9,000 people so far, CNN reports, and found that less than 1% of the tests were positive and, of those positive tests, around 50% of people were asymptomatic.
That finding, CNN reports, aligns with estimates by other experts who told the network that while how much of the outbreak has been fueled by those with no symptoms or very mild symptoms was yet unclear, “it’s become clear that transmission by people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic is responsible for more transmission than previously thought.”
Stefánsson offered his own take-away from his company’s findings thus far. “What it means in my mind, is that because we are screening the general population, we are catching people early in the infection before they start showing symptoms,” he told CNN. Another important aspect of the randomized tests is that it is helping to trace the way the virus has spread. “We can determine the geographic origin of the virus in every single [virus] in Iceland,” said Stefánsson.
Stefánsson also expressed hope that more information could come to light to clarify how people respond so differently to the virus. CNN notes that deCODE is better positioned to answer than most groups because “it already has the medical and genotype data of nearly half of Iceland’s population.”
As for how Iceland has been able to avoid the more “draconian measures” taken by other countries, the Directorate of Health told CNN that the country’s more widespread “testing and contact tracing” have allowed it to keep most of the society open. “There is also another reason, no less important,” the Directorate of Health added, “we have pursued a very aggressive policy of quarantine for individuals — suspected to be at risk of having contracted the virus — for much longer and at a higher scale than most other countries we are aware of.”
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