Brasilia: A new study published in the Frontiers in Medicine Journal has claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may remain active for more than what is now believed. These are, however, not regular cases and have been terms as atypical cases.
Out of 38 Brazillian patients, who have been tracked for this study, two men and a woman were continuously found positive for more than 70 days.
“Based on this result, we can say that about 8 per cent of people infected by SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus for more than two months, without necessarily manifesting any symptoms during the final stage of the infection,” said Marielton dos Passos Cunha, first author of the article.
The aim of the study was to assess whether a period of 14 days is adequate as the quarantine period. The author said though these atypical cases were few, they have concluded that 14 days are not enough to be sure that the person can’t spread the infection. . It can take a month for a patient to test negative, and in some cases included in our study the patients remained positive for 71 to 232 days, the researchers said.
The patients who participated in the study were tested until they tested negative.
In these three atypical cases, the virus remained detectable for 71 days in the woman and 81 days in one of the two men. None of them had comorbidities and all had mild symptoms of Covid-19. The other man who continued to test positive for coronavirus for 232 days had HIV but he had no viral load as he had already undergone treatment. All of them were infected by lineage B.1.1.28, which entered Brazil at the start of 2020, reports said.