Eurosurv. Duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in COVID-19 patients in home isolation, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, 2020 – an interval-censored survival analysis

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• Duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in COVID-19 patients in home isolation, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, 2020 – an interval-censored survival analysis
• Sarah Omar¹ , Christoph Bartz² , Sabine Becker² , Silke Basenach³ , Sandra Pfeifer³ , Corinna Trapp⁴ , Hildegard Hamm⁵ , Hans Christoph Schlichting⁶ , Magdalena Friederichs⁷ , Ulrich Koch⁸ , Christian Jestrabek⁹ , Ernst Hilger¹⁰ , Manfred Vogt¹¹ , Klaus Jahn¹² , Simiao Chen^13,14 , Till B?rnighausen^13,15,16 , Philipp Zanger^11,12,13,17, on behalf of the Palatina Public Health Study Group¹⁸

We analysed consecutive RT-qPCR results of 537 symptomatic coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in home quarantine. Respectively 2, 3, and 4 weeks after symptom onset, 50%, 25% and 10% of patients had detectable RNA from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). In patients with mild COVID-19, RNA detection is likely to outlast currently known periods of infectiousness by far and fixed time periods seem more appropriate in determining the length of home isolation than laboratory-based approaches.

full article

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.30.2001292#abstract_content