Singapore Study: COVID-19 Patients Stop Being Infectious After 11 Days

• Coronavirus patients are no longer infectious 11 days after contracting COVID-19, according to a new study.
• The study found that while the virus may still be present and detected on the 12th day, it can no longer spread the infection.
• The researchers hope that the findings could help hospitals decide on when they can discharge patients.

A new study claims that coronavirus patients are no longer infectious 11 days after contracting COVID-19. This holds true even if they test positive for the disease on the 12th day, according to the study.

The study was published as a joint paper for Singapore’s National Center for Infectious Diseases and the Academy of Medicine.

The study involved measuring the “viral load” in 73 COVID-19 patients to check whether the bug was still viable and could infect anyone.

According to the researchers, the virus “could not be isolated or cultured after day 11 of illness.”

The study read, “Based on the accumulated data since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the infectious period of [coronavirus] in symptomatic individuals may begin around 2 days before the onset of symptoms and persists for about 7-10 days after the onset of symptoms.”

The researchers said that while patients may still test positive after two weeks, the virus is no longer viable for spreading the infection. They said that the tests are only picking up fragments of the virus that are not infectious.

According to the researchers, “Active viral replication drops quickly after the first week, and viable virus was not found after the second week of illness.”

The study hopes that the findings could help hospitals decide on when they can discharge patients.

The current protocol is that patients should have two negative tests to be considered recovered from COVID-19.

The study’s sample size was indeed small, but the researchers are confident that larger studies will have the same findings.

NCID executive director Leo Yee-Sin told the Straits Times, “Scientifically, I’m very confident that there is enough evidence that the person is no longer infectious after 11 days.”

Source: New York Post