COVID patients exhale high numbers of virus during the first eight days after symptoms start, as high as 1,000 copies per minute, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
It is the first longitudinal, direct measure of the number of SARS-CoV-2 viral copies exhaled per minute over the course of the infection — from the first sign of symptoms until 20 days after.
Quantity of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies exhaled per minute during natural breathing over the course of COVID-19 infection. Gregory Lane, Guangyu Zhou, Judd F. Hultquist, Lacy M Simons, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, Egon A Ozer, Danielle M McCarthy, Michael G Ison, Chad J Achenbach, Xinkun Wang, Ching Man Wai, Eugene Wyatt, Alan Aalsburg, Qiaohan Yang, Torben Noto, Arghavan Alisoltani, Daniel Ysselstein, Rajeshwar Awatramani, Robert Murphy, Grant Theron, Christina Zelano. medRxiv 2023.09.06.23295138; DOI: 10.1101/2023.09.06.23295138