Only 1 of 32 COVID survivors testing positive had live virus, study revealed

A JAMA Internal Medicine research letter finds that 18% of recovered COVID-19 patients test positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but only 3% (1 of 32) carry replicating virus in their respiratory tract. Italian researchers studied 176 recovered COVID-19 patients admitted for post-acute follow-up treatment at Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS in Rome from Apr 21 to Jun 18. Patients had discontinued isolation according to current criteria—no fever for 3 consecutive days, improvement in symptoms, and two negative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results for the virus, 24 hours apart. Nasal/oropharyngeal (NOS) swab samples from the patients were analyzed for total (genomic) and replicative (subgenomic) SARS-CoV-2 RNA using RT-PCR assays. Subgenomic RNA is not yet packaged into virions—the complete, infectious form of a virus—and is transcribed only in infected cells, indicating active infection and possible transmissibility. Serologic testing for immunoglobulin (Ig) A and IgG antibodies was also conducted as...