Marcus Aurelius6:16p, 5/4/20AG
I have an elderly patient admitted for COVID-19. She has survived and is doing well. She is no longer symptomatic. She has had 8 positive COVID swabs!!!! And she has been in the hospital for 6 weeks. Her nursing home requires 2 consecutive negative swabs. So she languishes in the hospital, at risk for nosocomial infections, deconditioning, malnutrition, delirium, psychiatric illness, to name a few.
Have others experienced this? Is this inactive viral particles? And what to do for these people? Frustrating. I understand the nursing home’s policies but I really don’t think she’s infectious now.
txtomster3:18p
I work at a hospital in Houston . We have an employee that was positive in March . She only had a fever , no other symptoms . After 14 days she was tested and still showed positive , because she cannot come back to work until 2 negative tests. She continues to test positive and has not been able to return to work yet .
Ranger2228:59p, 5/4/20AG
The South Koreans have data that suggest remnants of the viral genome can last up to months. Sorry to hear about your case but I’m sure there will be many more like it.
Do you have any ideas what are the cycle numbers being returned for the qPCR test? You could make an argument if they are decreasing over time or are in the ~30s, right above the threshold for a “positive” result. If they had any data logged prior that cycles leading to positive were in 20s and now weeks later are in 30s, you could argue she has cleared (if they are willing to listen other than positive/negative result).
BiochemAg97In reply to Player To Be Named Later • 3:55p, 5/4/20AG
Player To Be Named Later said:
Is your office starting to do anti-body testing? If so, which test are y’all running with?
Thanks for all you do!I’m not that kind of Doctor. PhD not MD.
The company I work for is involved in almost every aspect of the response to this disease, from the early structural work and genetic sequencing, to rtPCR tests, to production of PPE and some of the drugs, to vaccine development, and likely vaccine production when we get there.
We don’t currently produce an antibody test. That has repeatedly been answered as we will only put our brand behind a quality antibody test, but we will help scale manufacturing if/when we find the right partner.
As for which antibody test I would recommend... stick with the tests that have EUA from the FDA.
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/emergency-situations-medical-devices/emergency-use-authorizations#covid19ivd
Some of those only test for IgG which is weeks after exposure but more likely to indicate recovered or near recovered patient. IgM/IgG tests has the ability to detect earlier in the process (IgM shows up before IgG) and could identify someone in the middle of an infection. Not as earlier as a nucleotide test, but if someone is IgM positive and IgG negative, they probably need a PCR test and self quarantine.
If the virus has an HIV type”spike” to it I get concerned that it might also have HIV type cronicity and stay latent and contagious the same way HIV, herpes or hepatitis viruses do.
Hence if such is the case, some folks may never show negative tests even though they are “stable”, they may continue to be latent sources of contagion.