A new study focuses on the timing of transmission in symptomatic patients. The risk of infecting other people is highest in the 2-3 days before and 2-3 days after the first symptoms
(photo: PixelCatchers via Getty Images) Early
recognition of Covid-19 infection is essential for prompt treatment and to reduce the likelihood of infecting others. Today a study conducted by the University of Oxford, entitled The timing of Covid-19 transmission, analyzed the timing of the transmission of Sars-Cov-2. In the case of symptomatic subjects - there are also asymptomatic positives, who will never develop symptoms - the main element of interest is not so much the time of infection but the day of the onset of symptoms, essential for better
management of the epidemic , from
contact tracing to early isolation of the infected up to the diagnosis of other cases. The research is first signed by Luca Ferretti of the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. The results, preliminary and to be confirmed, are not yet peer reviewed but are
available in pre-print on medRxiv.
What the study says
Researchers have built a model based on data of hundreds of virus-positive and symptomatic individuals from different geographic regions, compared with those
of thousands of people who have come into contact with the virus who have not been infected. The idea was to better study the trend of virus transmission, considering several elements: the time of exposure to Sars-Cov-2 and therefore of the infection, the duration of incubation and the pre-symptomatic phase, the appearance of symptoms , the duration of the contagiousness.
