Symptom-free Covid-19 patients are contagious and must be reported within two hours of confirmed diagnosis, the Chinese government has said. In a document published on Wednesday night, the State Council, the country’s cabinet, issued official guidelines for managing asymptomatic patients, those who tested positive for coronavirus but have yet to develop symptoms such as cough, fever and pneumonia.
The move came as official Covid-19 numbers have shown a daily increase in the number of asymptomatic patients from within China and from overseas.
Whether it's reinfection or reactivation, makes things a lot more complicated.
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The coronavirus may be “reactivating” in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 51 patients classed as having been cured in South Korea have tested positive again, the CDC said in a briefing on Monday. Rather than being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these people, given they tested positive again shortly after being released from quarantine, said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the Korean CDC.
“While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this,” Jeong said. “There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”
Countries wanting to end the lockdown and allow people to move about and work again will have to monitor closely for new infections and adjust the controls they have in place until there is a vaccine against Covid-19, according to a new study based on the Chinese experience.
China’s aggressive controls over daily life have brought the first wave of Covid-19 to an end, say researchers based in Hong Kong. But the danger of a second wave is very real.
“While these control measures appear to have reduced the number of infections to very low levels, without herd immunity against Covid-19, cases could easily resurge as businesses, factory operations, and schools gradually resume and increase social mixing, particularly given the increasing risk of imported cases from overseas as Covid-19 continues to spread globally,” says Prof Joseph T Wu from the University of Hong Kong, who co-led the research.
Man, there seems to be nothing that's immune from being impacted by this virus. It's truly humbling.
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'A disastrous situation': mountains of food wasted as coronavirus scrambles supply chain Farmers are seeing produce rot in fields and dairy wash down drains as they rush to find areas of demand and prevent closures
