Tested positively for the coronavirus and yet not contagious …

Did we talk about a second corona wave too early this summer? For the first time, there is evidence that many people who tested positive in the summer months were no longer contagious. They were walking around with an old infection. Still, they were registered as new cases and set off the corona alarm. That writes Het Laatste Nieuws on Monday. Infectiologist Erika Vlieghe makes nuances.

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The tests that our country uses to detect corona are hypersensitive. They can find the virus up to 83 days after someone has become infected. The disadvantage is that we also detect people walking around with dead virus particles. At that point, they are no longer contagious. Yet we do not distinguish and class them as new corona cases.

If it concerns a small minority of the total number of positive tests, the impact is small. However, there is evidence that there were a lot of cases last summer. Het Laatste Nieuws was able to view the results of one of the largest labs in our country – that of the AZ Delta in Roeselare – and established that in June, July and August almost half of all positive cases were actually people with an old infection. The same pattern would have been noted in Ghent, Bruges and 15 other regions. Only in Antwerp would there clearly have been many new infections.

“Hope for clearer tests”

Infectiologist Erika Vlieghe made some nuances, however. “We have to be very careful to continue that line,” she said Monday morning in ‘The morning’ on Radio 1. “We do indeed notice that someone can test positive without showing any complaints or having a low amount of virus in the body has. But the large number now are people with complaints. In time, we hope that the tests will become clearer: that we can measure not only whether the virus is present in someone, but also how much virus someone carries and how contagious he or she is. But the situation is now quite different: not only the number of positive tests is increasing, but also the number of people who are so ill that they have to be admitted to hospital. The number of patients in intensive care is also increasing. That points to much more than just old infections. ”

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