This is really great news as America continues to reopen.
A new study from Singapore shows that we might not need to quarantine those who test positive for COVID for 14 days after all.
The test group was small, but the results were consistent with another study done in Germany that determined that COVID patients were most infectious in the first week of symptoms and it declined during the last few days.
“In a local study from a multicenter cohort of 73 COVID-19 patients, when the Ct value was 30 or higher (i.e. when viral load is low), no viable virus (based on being able to culture the virus) has been found,” the researchers wrote in the study. “In addition, virus could not be isolated or cultured after day 11 of illness.”
The researchers noted that a separate study out of Germany found “the degree of viral shedding was very high in the first week of symptoms,” supporting their findings.
The bad news is that people could be infectious before showing symptoms, and we already know that there are some people that are asymptomatic.
“In sputum, sgRNA (also known as (viral subgenomic messenger RNAs, which are only present in actively-infected cells) declined over days 10 – 11, and in throat swabs, sgRNA was not detected after day 5,” the researchers added. “Infectious virus was cultured from throat and lung specimens in the first week of symptoms, but none after day 8 in spite of high viral loads detected by regular PCR.”
“Based on the accumulated data since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the infectious period of SARS-CoV-2 in symptomatic individuals may begin around 2 days before the onset of symptoms, and persists for about 7 – 10 days after the onset of symptoms,” the researchers concluded. “Active viral replication drops quickly after the first week, and viable virus was not found after the second week of illness despite the persistence of PCR detection of RNA.”
Source: Fox News
Singapore has had a low rate of infections compared to many other countries. Johns Hopkins University compiled data on worldwide infections and Singapore had 32,433 confirmed COVID patients along with an exceptionally low fatality rate, at just 23 deaths.
This is still welcome news as the world is concerned about a possible “second wave” of the virus in the fall. If people are not as infectious as initially believed, it may mean that if further quarantines are required, they could be more strategic and much shorter.
That’s some good news that we should all cling to.
