May 28, 2020

expert reaction to study looking at recurrent positive test results in COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital in China

Research, published in JAMA Network Open, reports on recurrent positive test results in COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital in China.

Prof Babak Javid, Principal Investigator, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, and Consultant in Infectious Diseases at Cambridge University Hospitals, said:

“This is yet another case series from China that confirms that patients discharged after a Covid diagnosis and in recovery may continue to shed viral RNA, that can be detected by the swab PCR test.  None of the patients that are described as ‘recurrent’ in this study actually became ill from relapsed Covid.

“There are now substantial data from e.g. S. Korea that confirms that patients that are recovering from Covid who still have detectable RNA do NOT pose an infection hazard.  This study did not actually look for infectious virus from their ‘recurrent’ patients, so unfortunately does not further the field in this regard.

“I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of patients who have recovered from Covid do not pose an infection risk, even if they continue to have detectable viral RNA shedding.”

‘Recurrent Positive Reverse Transcriptase–Polymerase Chain Reaction Results for Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Patients Discharged From a Hospital in China’ by Rujun Hu et al. was published in JAMA Network Open at 16:00 UK time on Thursday 28 May 2020.

DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.10475

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.