Here’s When Coronavirus Is Most Contagious; Over 70s to Be Told to Self-Isolate for Months Even If Not Ill

By Science News. As sweeping efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic go into effect around the globe, researchers are starting to get hints of just when patients are most contagious.

People infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease, may test positive for the virus both before and after they have symptoms. But a new study of nine people who contracted the virus in Germany suggests that people are mainly contagious before they have symptoms and in the first week of the disease.

Infectious viruses were isolated from about 17 percent of nose and throat swabs and more than 83 percent of phlegm samples during that first week, researchers report March 8 in a study posted at medRxiv.org.

Patients produced thousands to millions of viruses in their noses and throats, about 1,000 times as much virus as produced in SARS patients, Clemens Wendtner, director of infectious disease and tropical medicine at Munich Clinic Schwabing, a teaching hospital, and his colleagues found. That heavy load of viruses may help explain why the new coronavirus is so infectious. . .

After the eighth day of symptoms, the researchers could still detect the virus’s genetic material, RNA, in patients’ swabs or samples, but could no longer find infectious viruses. That’s an indication that antibodies that the body’s immune system makes against SARS-CoV-2 are killing viruses that get out of cells, Wendtner says. (Read more from “Here’s When Coronavirus Is Most Contagious” HERE)

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Over 70s to Be Told to Self-Isolate for Months Even If Not Ill

By Mirror UK. People in Britain aged over 70 will be instructed soon by the government to stay in strict isolation for four months as part of a planned response to coronavirus, broadcaster ITV’s political editor said.

Robert Peston said the government was likely to enforce a “wartime-style” mobilisation effort in the next five to 20 days.

Other measures being planned include hotels and other building being used as temporary hospitals, privately-run hospitals being converted into emergency medical care centres and commissioning several companies to make respirators that can keep acutely ill victims alive.

New rules would see pubs, bars and restaurants shut their doors temporarily and schools would close for a few weeks but children of key workers will be allowed to continue attending as skeleton staff will be providing childcare.

A senior government source told ITV News, the belief that the government are reluctant to make difficult and costly decisions to battle the virus is untrue. (Read more from “Over 70s to Be Told to Self-Isolate for Months Even If Not Ill” HERE)

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