The latest study on Covid-19 has claimed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus might remain infectious even after the recommended quarantine period, without necessarily manifesting any symptoms. The research, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, involved 38 Brazilian patients who were followed every week between April and November 2020.
The researchers found that it took a month on average for the diagnostic test to become negative. In addition to this, two men and a woman were found to have traces of the Covid-19 virus for more than 70 days, the author of the research said.
Sharing the information of the participants, the researchers said that none of them had comorbidities and all had mild symptoms of Covid-19.
The other atypical man continued to test positive for coronavirus for 232 days, after which he tested negative three times by RT-qPCR, they said.
He has had HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since 2018 but has no detectable viral load thanks to antiretroviral therapy
"Of the 38 cases we tracked, two men and a woman were atypical in the sense that the virus was continuously detected in their organism for more than 70 days," said Marielton dos Passos Cunha, author of the research said.
The research claimed that more than 8% of people infected by SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus for more than two months.
"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," said Paola Minoprio, one of the coordinators of the Platform and principal investigator for the study.
The finding serves as an alert regarding the risk of limiting quarantine for Covid-19 patients to seven, ten, or even 14 days after they test positive, as initially prescribed by protocols to combat the disease, the researchers said.
It also reinforces the significance of vaccination, social distancing, and mask-wearing, they said.
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