Up to 13% of patients with coronavirus can continue to transmit the virus even after the 10-day quarantine, a study using a customized diagnostic test that shows whether the virus remains active finds.
The study from the University of Exeter, published in the international Journal of Infectious Diseases, looked at 176 people who had tested positive with the classic molecular screening test.
It found that 13% of people after 10 days still had clinically significant levels of the virus meaning they could still be infectious. In fact, some of the study participants maintained these levels up to 68 days after contracting the virus.
The study researchers believe the new diagnostic test should be applied in environments where people are vulnerable to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Professor of Medicine at the University of Exeter Lorna Harris, the study's supervisor, noted that "although this is a relatively small study, the results show that the potentially active virus can sometimes persist beyond a 10-day period and could pose a potential risk of further transmission. Even more so, given that there was nothing clinically specific in these people, which means we could not predict who they are."
Conventional PCR tests check for the presence of viral fragments. This means they can diagnose if someone has recently contracted the virus, but they cannot detect if it is still active and that the person is infectious.
The particular test used in the latest study only gives a positive result when the virus is active, so it can potentially be transmitted further.
The lead author from the University of Exeter Medical School Merlin Davis said: "In some cases, patients returning to nursing homes after hospitalization may remain infectious after ten days. In this case they pose a serious risk to public health. We may need to ensure that people in such an environment have been diagnosed that the virus does not remain active, thus ensuring that they are no longer infectious. We will be conducting larger studies to investigate this further."
Chief executive of Animal Free Research UK - which funded the research - Carla Owen described the University of Exeter team's discovery as exciting and potentially very important, adding that focusing on human biology during medical research can produce results that are more reliable and more likely to benefit people and animals.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the University of Exeter Medical School, the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust and the NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility.
Source.gr
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