After three months, the virus is not terrible – Respublika.lt

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After three months, the virus is not terrible. Photo by EPA-Elta

This is published by researchers from international organizations (European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and the World Health Organization) who have summarized the research data .

In addition, researchers have calculated the terms for how long people with mild, moderate or severe forms of coronavirus can infect others. This was taken into account in the amendments on patient isolation and additional PCR testing.

Studies show that mild to moderate COVID-19 patients are contagious for up to 10 days after the onset of symptoms. People who develop a severe form of the disease can infect others for up to 20 days after symptoms appear.

The studies did not show any cases of infection in clinically healthy patients whose nasopharyngeal swabs still contain the virus.

Based on the findings of these studies, the Ministry of Health has updated the procedure to suspend the isolation of patients with COVID-19. No further PCR examination of the nasopharynx and pharyngeal smear is required to determine recovery.

In patients with mild COVID-19, isolation can be interrupted 10 days after the onset of symptoms if the patient no longer has a fever for at least 3 days without taking antipyretics and other symptoms of the coronavirus have resolved. In patients with severe COVID-19, isolation can be interrupted after 20 days. In patients with asymptomatic coronavirus infection, isolation can be suspended 10 days after the date of collection of the smear detected by PCR.

Aurelija ŽVIRBLIENĖ, Professor at the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center, Vice President of the Lithuanian Society of Immunologists, comments on the situation:

– There are rumors that it is not so easy to get COVID-19 infection by touching various surfaces. And don’t overdo it by sanitizing everything around you. Is this really so? – “Vakaro žinios” was asked by Aurelija Žvirblienė, Professor at the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center, Vice President of the Lithuanian Society of Immunologists.

– It would be interesting to hear who could say that. Yes, the main contamination is from air droplets, but contact surfaces are also at risk. When a sick person sighs, these droplets escape from the mouth and settle on the surface. On the table, on the handles touched by a sick person.

Another question is how long that virus stays on the surface. It depends on many things: temperature, humidity, etc. And there is no rule that the virus remains in control for 12 hours and elsewhere for 3 days, making it difficult to answer that question. But if an infected person just passed by, sighed or touched a handle with infected hands, and then another person has touched the same handle and then touched their face, there is of course a high risk of infection. That will be minimized if you wash your hands with soap or disinfect them.

Was the bar bent with disinfectant fluids, surface disinfectants? Definitely not. This helps prevent COVID-19, the flu, and all other respiratory illnesses.

– Now, after 10 days of COVID-19 illness or isolation, if the asymptomatic form, a test is no longer necessary, a person can return to work. In the past, more than one person had to be in isolation for a month if the test was still positive. What changed?

– There is a lot of scientific evidence about the viability of the virus. For us, a routine molecular test detects the viral RNA (the virus itself) from the nasopharynx, but the test does not show whether the virus is alive or where only the remains of the virus. Determining the viability of the virus is very difficult, so those labs that know how to grow the virus have studied many people who were infected with the coronavirus at different times. After a certain period of time it was observed how much of this substance extracted from the nasopharynx still contained live virus. Based on these scientific data, it has been found that for the vast majority of people, the virus remains viable in the nasopharynx for 5-7 days. And if a person who has experienced symptoms has taken a positive test, after 10 days that person is definitely no longer contagious. Therefore, it no longer makes sense to repeat these tests. In the past, people used to do these tests for two months and they kept testing positive. There is now scientific evidence that even if the test is positive, there is simply a virus RNA disaster, as the vast majority of people no longer have the virus after about 7 days. The insurance takes 10 days, after which it is not necessary to repeat the tests.

There were no such research summaries during the spring pandemic, we still didn’t know everything. Studies to show whether a virus is alive or not are very complex and require special laboratories that know how to grow the virus, that have cells for that virus, etc. This is not the same as anyone who takes a sample from the nasopharynx to determine whether the virus is alive or not. Therefore, it took time for such scientific data to emerge.