People with the novel coronavirus may have the same viral load — or amount of virus in the body — whether or not they are showing symptoms of illness, according to researchers in China.
The letter from the researchers, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, details how the researchers monitored viral loads of the novel coronavirus in samples taken from the nose and throat of 18 patients: nine men and nine women ranging in age from 26 to 76 in Zhuhai, in China’s Guangdong province.
For those samples, a total of 72 nasal swabs and 72 throat swabs were collected and analyzed.
The analysis revealed that higher viral loads were detected soon after a person was showing symptoms, with higher viral loads found in the nose than in the throat. Among the patients, only one was asymptomatic.
Yet overall, “the viral load that was detected in the asymptomatic patient was similar to that in the symptomatic patients, which suggests the transmission potential of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients,” the researchers wrote in the letter.
“These findings are in concordance with reports that transmission may occur early in the course of infection and suggest that case detection and isolation may require strategies different from those required for the control of SARS-CoV,” the researchers wrote, referring to severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS. “[W]e need better data to determine transmission dynamics and inform our screening practices."
It also turned out that, when it comes to viral shedding, the novel coronavirus seemed to resemble influenza more than SARS, according to the letter.
How many affected: Globally, the World Health Organization has reported that there have been more than 75,000 laboratory or clinically confirmed cases of novel coronavirus and more than 2,000 deaths.
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