People infected with the novel coronavirus can transmit the infection one-to-three days before symptoms start to appear, according to a study published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to the CDC, fever, cough, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing were the only symptoms associated with COVID-19 but it has now added six more to list.
The six new additions are:
Chills
Repeated shaking with chills
Muscle pain
Headache
Sore throat
New loss of taste or smell
If you have any of the nine aforementioned symptoms then you might want to call the doctors. Such symptoms could be due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
A CDC study, which underscored the importance of social distancing to fight the coronavirus outbreak, looked at 243 cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, reported in Singapore between January 23 and March 16.
It identified seven ‘clusters’ where pre-symptomatic transmission was likely, and in four such groups, where the date of exposure could be determined, pre-symptomatic transmission occurred one-to-three days before symptoms appeared in the source patient.
Another study revealed that 20.7% of specimens that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 also tested positive for one or more other pathogens as well.
The CDC list, however, is far from exhaustive. For example, stomach ache and diarrhea could be the first signs of COVID-19 according to some scientists. A letter to the Journal of The European Academy of Dermatology and Venerealogy reported on two patients with COVID-19 who initially had only fever and urticaria.
The findings increase the challenges of containment measures, the researchers wrote, but said the magnitude of the impact depends on the extent and duration of transmissibility while a patient is pre-symptomatic and that has so far not been clearly established.
PNN/Agencies