Many patients test positive after virus symptoms resolve
Small Chinese study of 16 patients shows some have the virus up to eight days after they had apparently recovered from COVID-19
As many as half of patients with COVID-19 continue to test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus up to eight days after symptoms resolve, Chinese researchers report.
There has been at least one case of a patient with high viral titres after the resolution of symptoms who infected two close contacts.
But it has remained unclear how long patients with COVID-19 infection continue to harbour the virus after they no longer have symptoms.
A team at Chinese PLA General Hospital, in Beijing, evaluated the time kinetics of viral clearance (measured by real-time PCR) with respect to the resolution of symptoms in 16 confirmed COVID-19 patients.
