A new study, conducted by specialists in Singapore, has revealed that coronavirus patients stop being infectious 11 days after contracting the disease, even if they continue to test positive for new tests. The scientists discovered that the coronavirus “could not be isolated or cultivated after day 11 of the disease.”
“Based on data accumulated since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, the infective period of [coronavirus] in symptomatic individuals may begin around two days before the onset of symptoms, and persists for approximately 7-10 days after onset. Of symptoms, “the researchers wrote.
Two weeks after the onset of the disease, patients may still test positive, but specialists suggest that tests could detect fragments of the virus that are no longer viable to spread the infection. “Active viral replication drops rapidly after the first week, and a viable virus was not found after the second week of illness,” they explained. The findings could modify current hospital criteria for when to discharge infected patients.
The results of the study were published this May 23 in a joint document of the National Center for Infectious Diseases and the Chapter of Doctors of Infectious Diseases of the Asian Academy of Medicine. The specialists’ conclusions were based on a multicenter study of 73 local patients.
The document also refers to a “small but important” study that was carried out in nine patients in Germany and found that the viral detachment of the throat and lungs was very high in the first week but ended on the eighth day.
