Poll of the Day > Can someone point me to a reliable source on how long someone is infectious?!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Family member tested positive for the virus, but were struggling to get them retested so we just need to see how long she has to isolate for.

Cant seem to find a definitive answer for how long someone is infectious after testing positive. Ive seen some articles say 7 days after testing positive, but some also say up to two weeks after the 7 day point so technically three weeks after testing positive. Whats the real number?

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There's no "real number", you just play it safe and take the maximum time you can.
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69 days

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This is the closest I've found so far regarding guidelines https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/disposition-hospitalized-patients.html

rjsilverthorn posted...

This is the closest I've found so far regarding guidelines https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/disposition-hospitalized-patients.html

Thanks. So according to this its 7 days since the onset of the first symptom or 72 hours since the last observed occurrence of any symptom like fever or cough.

tricky though cause Ive heard a cough can linger for weeks even after somebodys past the illness

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2 years minimum

I'm pretty sure I read that it was 2 weeks, but you are most contagious during the first 7 days, but I don't have a source.

I have heard that you can not develop symptoms till the second week though and funnily enough going out into the sun can actually help fight it off.

So much stuff out there though you don't really know what is real.

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Yeah thats the problem. Cant really blame anybody though this thing is too new to know anything definitively

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

There's no "real number", you just play it safe and take the maximum time you can.

This.

But for what it's worth, a friend of mine tested positive, and was in the hospital for it. In his case, he didn't have symptoms for about 5 days minimum (he knows exactly where he contracted it, but not exactly when - but he was definitely infected without symptoms for at least 5 days, if not more), then he was sick (mainly fever and chest congestion) for about 6 days before he got so bad he needed to go to the hospital. Then he spent about 5 days in the hospital (not on a ventilator, though), and then he was released (he still had symptoms, but they were less severe).

When they released him he was told to self-quarantine (from the rest of his family as well as not leaving the house to potentially infect others outside) for about 10 days.

So you can sort of get a rough potential timeline from that. Though the problem is, every person is different, so their symptoms will be different levels of severe, can last longer or shorter periods of time, and the point where they're finally "safe" may vary (and different doctors will recommend different amounts of time to self-quarantine for safety).

Personally, I'd say if you're looking for a precise number of went to interact with someone who definitely tested positive for it (and showed symptoms), and you want to be as safe as possible and not half-ass things just to get it over with as quickly as possible, I'd wait up to two weeks after they stop showing symptoms. Anything less and you're honestly risking potential infection (even if the risk is minor).

Basically, you have to decide for yourself how important it is to you to avoid getting infected.
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I can't speak for how long you are infected, but I just read that three minutes in the sun kills the virus. Doesn't help when it is inside you, however.

kukukupo posted...

I can't speak for how long you are infected, but I just read that three minutes in the sun kills the virus. Doesn't help when it is inside you, however.

Pretty hard to expose the inside of a human body to the sun without some very brutal violence that would likely kill the person.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

he knows exactly where he contracted it, but not exactly when

Curious. How did you know where? Was his traveling about limited enough for him to isolate where? For me personally, between work, CostCo, various restaurants, my sister and brother-in-law, etc. I honestly would have no idea where I would get it if I come up testing positive.

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InfestedAdam posted...

Curious. How did you know where? Was his traveling about limited enough for him to isolate where? For me personally, between work, CostCo, various restaurants, my sister and brother-in-law, etc. I honestly would have no idea where I would get it if I come up testing positive.

He mainly only went between work and home after the shit started hitting the fan. At first his employer had everyone from multiple locations work out of a central crisis center, but they eventually let them work from home.

A couple days after his last day at the crisis center, his employer called him and told him one of his coworkers had tested positive. So that's pretty much the prime vector (it could be from somewhere else, but it's exceedingly unlikely), and his assumption is that she was there touching things, sharing the same coffee pot, etc while she was still asymptomatic.

Because of the unique circumstances, he can narrow down when he was exposed to it to about a two week span (and because of when she started showing symptoms, it was probably within the last few days of possible exposure). And he knows he couldn't have been exposed to it after he started working from home, because he didn't really go back out again.

Since his symptoms started showing up about five days after he left the crisis center, he knows he was asymptomatic for at least 5 days, if not more. Though technically, he could have been asymptomatic for up to like 2 weeks (but that's unlikely for multiple reasons).

After that, the math becomes more objective.
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If there's one reliable thing throughout this whole ordeal is the unending torrent of unreliable information. Even the supposed test is unreliable.

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Fo
EV
Urrr