KPFA - Corona Calls

Corona Calls for 10.02.2023 – What we know about when you’re infectious just changed

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Discussed in this episode:

  • Early in the pandemic, studies showed the amount of SARS-COV2 in nasal swabs peaked right about the time people got their first symptoms — helping to establish that a lot of spread was attributable to pre-symptomatic people. A new study shows viral load is now peaking 4-5 days after symptom onset, possibly because widespread population immunity means symptoms appear sooner in the course of infection.
    • The most immediate implication concerns how to use home tests, which are not sensitive enough to detect low levels of the virus: if you have symptoms, and test negative on a home test, you don’t want to rely on that negative home test result. You can try to confirm a negative result with a PCR test. (If you test positive on a home test you almost certainly *do* have COVID).
    • The WHO is now recommending new influenza vaccines drop the component targeting Influenza B / Yamagatta, a strain which appears to have gone extinct when early COVID lockdowns slowed the spread of many other infectious diseases.

      • We’ll start taking listener questions again next week (which will happen Tuesday because Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day). Send your questions to [email protected]

      Podcast music credit:  Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

      The post Corona Calls for 10.02.2023 – What we know about when you’re infectious just changed appeared first on KPFA.

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