Recent reports about patients in China testing positive for #COVID19 again after discharged from hospital have triggered public concern about the powerful contagiousness of the novel coronavirus.
Chengdu in SW China’s Sichuan province followed by the provinces of Shandong, Tianjin, and Jiangsu were the first to report patients testing positive for the virus after recovery.
About 14 percent of the recovered patients discharged from hospitals in Guangdong had tested positive for the virus again, Song Tie, deputy director of the Center for Disease Control in Guangdong Province told on a press conference on Feb. 25.
The news has some people worried about whether recovered patients remain contagious. Experts say the results are not surprising and that testing positive after recovery does not necessarily mean the virus can spread.
Stanley Perlman, MD, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, confirmed to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, a public health center within the University of Minnesota. She said that the viral genomic material detected in the test kits do not necessarily indicate that it is infectious.
“Genomic material comes from virus, of course, but it does not indicate that infectious virus is present,” Perlman said, adding that a positive test means that virus is or was present a day or two before.
Zhang Wenhong, leader of the Shanghai expert team for COVID-19 treatment, said there is no domestic data to support the claim that recovered patients who test positive after recovery can infect others.
“Viral infections follow their own laws and fully-recovered patients are less likely to get sick again. The positive test results might be caused by fecal and intestinal virus residues,” Zhong Nanshan, the leading expert on COVID-19 in China, explained at a press conference on Feb. 27.
In response, some hospitals in China have started to test recovered patients using an anal swab test instead of throat swab test, which is a more accurate method to find out whether their stomach, intestines, and feces have virus residue.
In addition, the patients must undergo a two-week follow-up observation, at which time more samples are collected, Zhang introduced. (by Li Yi)
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