Scientists Determine When a Patient Is No Longer Contagious From Coronavirus | Health | Magazine

The Charité clinics in Berlin and the Schwabing clinics in Munich, as well as the German Army Institute of Microbiology, announced that they have discovered that the coronavirus patient is no longer contagious when tests are removed from the nasopharyngeal area and fluids expelled by coughing, have fewer than 100,000 copies of the virus genome.

According to the results of the study, published in the journal NaturePatients can be discharged if, less than that number of copies of the virus genome, they show in the fluids, expelled when coughing, ten days after becoming ill.

First, “the high viral load in the pharynx, immediately with the first symptoms, suggests that COVID-19 patients are soon infectious, possibly even before they realize they are sick,” noted Roman Wölfel, director of the Army Institute of Microbiology.

“At the same time, the infectious capacity of patients with COVID-19 seems to depend on the viral load in the pharynx or the lung. That is an important factor in deciding when a patient can be discharged at the earliest, in case of a shortage of beds and the corresponding time pressure, “he stresses.

“The new coronavirus can multiply in the pharynx without reaching the lung and therefore is very easily transmissible,” explained Christian Drosten, director of the Charité Institute of Virology, and co-author of the study. This, carried out in the group infected by the outbreak at the German automobile components company Webasto, indicates – in most cases – that the viral load in the pharynx had decreased markedly after the first week of illness; in the lung, a little later.

The group of scientists now plans, from this first group of patients but also from other infected patients, to analyze the long-term development of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, data that could contribute to the development of a vaccine. (I)

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