Duration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in COVID-19 patients in home isolation, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, 2020 – an interval-censored survival analysis
Sarah Omar, Christoph Bartz, Sabine Becker, Silke Basenach, Sandra Pfeifer, Corinna Trapp, Hildegard Hamm, Hans Christoph Schlichting, Magdalena Friederichs, Ulrich Koch, Christian Jestrabek, Ernst Hilger, Manfred Vogt, Klaus Jahn, Simiao Chen, Till Bärnighausen, Philipp Zanger, on behalf of the Palatina Public Health Study Group
Abstract
We analysed consecutive RT-qPCR results of 537 symptomatic coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in home quarantine. Respectively 2, 3, and 4 weeks after symptom onset, 50%, 25% and 10% of patients had detectable RNA from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). In patients with mild COVID-19, RNA detection is likely to outlast currently known periods of infectiousness by far and fixed time periods seem more appropriate in determining the length of home isolation than laboratory-based approaches.