Children could carry coronavirus for longer than previously thought, US study says
- Analysis of records from Washington hospital finds the median time to test negative is 25 days, while other research has suggested it’s 20 days for adults
- But it’s not clear if they are still passing on the virus as they recover, since the positive result could be caused by gene fragments
Researchers at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington analysed the medical records of more than 60 children who had been tested multiple times for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and found the median time it took to test negative was 25 days.
That was longer than some previous estimates. A recent study by the National Clinical Research Centre for Infectious Diseases in Shenzhen, China, for instance, found most children were clear of the virus after 18 days.
“The takeaway here is that we can’t let our guard down,” said Burak Bahar, lead author of the new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, in a statement on Thursday.
Among adults, the median time from testing positive to testing negative is around 20 days, according to studies from around the world.
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While it is rare for people to be passing on the virus by shedding particles for longer than a month, there have been extreme cases of this happening, such as an asymptomatic patient in southwest China who only tested negative after 45 days.