People with mild Covid are likely to be infectious for an average of five days, a new study estimates. Only one in five people in the study were infectious before symptoms started, it was suggested.
According to the research, two-thirds of cases were still infectious five days after symptoms began, with a quarter still infectious at seven days. The study, led by Imperial College London and published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, is the first to reveal how long infectiousness lasts after coronavirus infection in the community.
Detailed daily tests were conducted from when people were exposed to the virus to look at how much virus they were shedding throughout their infection. The findings indicate that lateral flow tests do not reliably detect the start of infectiousness, but can be used to safely shorten self-isolation.
