Covid patients can remain infectious following recovery. [View all]

[NNadir]

The paper to which I will refer is this one from scientists in China, where they have the most long term knowledge of this disease: Chang, Mo, Wang et al., Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.202003-0524LE.

It is a small study and its statistical power is unclear, but in the interest of safety, it may be wise to consider it.

The world's scientific publishing community has made all Covid related papers open sourced, and this paper is no exception.

Time kinetics of symptom onset, duration of symptoms and viral clearance is described
in Table 1. The viral detection test was performed upon clinical presentation and repeated
every other day until the patient tested negative. The negative test was confirmed again
the next day. Upon confirmation of the negative test, the patient was asked to quarantine
at home for the next two weeks with a follow-up visit to the hospital after one week to
confirm the viral negative status. The incubation periods were estimated based on the
history of the patient’s travel or potential exposure. Our data show an incubation period
of 5 days (IQR 1-6 days) among the patients (except for patient 12 who had no specific
exposure). The mean duration of symptoms was estimated to be 8 days (IQR 6.25-11.5).
Most importantly, half (8/16) of the patient remained viral positive (a surrogate marker of

shedding) even after the resolution of symptoms (Median 2.5 days, range 1 to 8 days).
Some of our patients had other comorbidities, which included diabetes (2/16) and
tuberculosis (1/16), both of which did not affect the time course of the disease. Similarly,
the clinical course for the 3-year-old male did not significantly differ from the rest of the
patients.

Be safe and healthy.