One-liner: Some people infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus for longer than the recommended quarantine period, without necessarily manifesting any symptoms during the final stage of the infection, a study suggests.
Zoom in: The research, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, involved 38 Brazilian patients who were followed on a weekly basis between April and November 2020.
- The researchers followed the patients until they tested negative twice or three times consecutively by RT-qPCR
- They found that it took a month on average for the diagnostic test to become negative
Virus detected continuously: "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." – Marielton dos Passos Cunha, first author of the research
- "Based on this result, we can say that about 8% 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."
Need to know: The researchers wanted to know if a period of 14 days was really long enough for the virus to stop being detectable, concluding that it was not.
Caution: The finding serves as an alert regarding the risk of limiting quarantine for Covid 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
Difference in viral activity: The difference between women and men in terms of the duration of viral activity was not significant, averaging 22 days and 33 days respectively.
- As for the 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, the researchers said
Source: PTI