Some coronavirus patients are still testing positive after recovering

[Judi Lynn]

A series of reports a few weeks ago revealed a troubling detail about the novel coronavirus pandemic. Some patients who had been declared recovered after testing negative in hospitals puzzled physicians in China, Italy, Japan, and South Korea by retesting positive later.

Several explanations were offered for the patients that tested positive again, with scientists arguing these people might not be contagious. Instead, issues with test kits and human error might have been to blame. Also, some patients might have been discharged from hospitals too early to free up resources for severe cases.

An NPR report a few days ago said that second-time infections keep popping up in Wuhan, China, where the crisis began in late December 2019. Residents who had tested positive and then recovered tested positive again. And it’s not just a few cases. According to available data from several quarantine facilities in the city, anywhere from 5% to 10% of cured patients tested positive twice. These facilities keep patients under observation after their discharge. Some appear to be asymptomatic carriers, which implies they could still pass on the SARS-CoV-2 virus to other people.

NPR was in contact with four such individuals, including two doctors. One patient experienced severe COVID-19 symptoms and was hospitalized, while another only displayed mild symptoms and was quarantined in a special isolation center. But they tested positive again after recovery in a matter of a few days or a few weeks. It’s unclear which one tested positive weeks after being discharged.

More:
https://bgr.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-cases-keep-testing-positive-after-covid-19-recovery/

[cstanleytech]

1. So what happens if there are people that are asymptomatic carriers here in the US? How do they keep

them from spreading it more without imprisoning them?

[stopdiggin]

2. they don"t (nt)

[cstanleytech]

3. I'm just wondering because I do know that they did imprison

Mary Mallon so I am wondering if they have plans to the same now for people who are carriers of this virus.

[HockeyMom]

5. How will they know who is an asymptomatic carrier

unless they test all 300 Million people living in the US?

[Delmette2.0]

6. How many times should people be tested?

Once to prove they have COVID-19.

Two or three times to prove they have cleared the virus (not shedding the virus)?

Then if they are still contagious how often are they tested?
What percentage are ongoing carriers? If someone is a carrier what do we do with them?

What if the current test only screens for one mutation of the virus? Is it the mild version or the deadly version? How many mutations are there? 8 or 9?

How many tests will we really need?

Lots of questions and few answers and resources.

Stay home as much as possible but know that it is likely that sometime you will get this virus and pass it along.

Stay safe, protect other people and be prepared as you can.

(no group hug)

[Squinch]

4. The thing about this is that, unless we get a vaccine, the vast majority of us must get it.

We won't be able to consider this over till that happens.

All these measures we are taking now are so that we all get it over a much longer period of time so as not to overwhelm the medical system, so we can all get good care and thus have a better chance of surviving.

I don't know what the % is who must get it in order for herd immunity to begin to kick in, but I think I read 70%.

So those asymptomatic spreaders? They just go back out into the pool.

[Igel]

7. Nobody thinks it's over when the curve's flattened.

It's not reduced to 0. It's flattened so as not to overwhelm the hospital system.

It reduces the total number of patients, but it still gets well over 50% of the pouplation that gets it.

Doesn't bode well for the elderly who, even when treated, have a fairly high die-off rate (doesn't break 20%, but who's happy saying that 10% of an age group will die. The stats have been out for a while, but the media are just seeing the numbers for various age groups and the results of just oxygen, ventilator use, or blood oxygenation. For some groups, the results are fairly good--very critical to walking out in 7 days. For other groups, ventilator use still has majority of the patients die after a couple of weeks or more, and even blood oxygenation still sees about half die

The other goal is to make it last so long that there's a vaccine. But that means a year of this kind of thing, which'll be rough. I'm assuming that medical folk, known for being cautious, will be saying it'll take "at least 18 months" to develop the vaccine. But, as with most drug trials, if the stuff is shown to be fairly low-risk and shows a benefit, the trial will continue while emergency approval is given for use. Sometimes this is foolish, as "low-risk" turns out to be misquantified, and sometimes the medicine turns out to be not so useful. Given the fatality rate for this bug, though, the only real issue will be indemnification for its use: Your uncle Johnny dies from the vaccine (for whatever reason) it's bad, and it's unlikely he'd have died if he'd contracted the vaccine. You wouldn't stop to say, "More lives were saved than lost, it's a sacrifice for the common good." You'd want blood.

[BadgerKid]

8. Links for 60% and 70%

For mumps, you need 92 percent of the population to be immune for the disease to stop spreading entirely. This is what's known as the herd immunity threshold. COVID-19 is, fortunately, much less infectious than mumps, with an estimated R0 of roughly 3.

With this number, the proportion of people who need to be infected is lower but still high, sitting at around 70 percent of the entire population.

[link:https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic|]

Research so far suggests that the coronavirus has a lower infection rate than measles, with each infected person passing it on to two or three new people, on average. This means that herd immunity should be achieved when around 60 percent of the population becomes immune to COVID-19.

[link:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/uk-backed-off-on-herd-immunity-to-beat-coronavirus-we-need-it/|]

[Squinch]

9. Thank you!