Viral Ribonucleic Acid Shedding and Transmission Potential of Asymptomatic and Paucisymptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients

Arghadip Samaddar; Ravisekhar Gadepalli; Vijaya Lakshmi Nag; Sanjeev Misra; Pankaj Bhardwaj; Pankaj Singh; Mahadev Meena; Prem Prakash Sharma; Malika Grover; Mahendra Kumar Garg; Nishant Kumar Chauhan; Naveen Dutt; Ram Niwas; Deepak Kumar; Praveen Sharma; Akhil Dhanesh Goel; Manoj Kumar Gupta; Suman Saurabh; Shubham Rai; Chunnilal Lawdiya; Jinesh Saini; Deepak Singh

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofaa599

Viral Ribonucleic Acid Shedding and Transmission Potential of Asymptomatic and Paucisymptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2020 Dec 8;8(1):ofaa599. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofaa599. eCollection 2021 Jan.

Authors

Arghadip Samaddar¹, Ravisekhar Gadepalli¹, Vijaya Lakshmi Nag¹, Sanjeev Misra², Pankaj Bhardwaj³, Pankaj Singh¹, Mahadev Meena⁴, Prem Prakash Sharma³, Malika Grover¹, Mahendra Kumar Garg⁴, Nishant Kumar Chauhan⁵, Naveen Dutt⁵, Ram Niwas⁵, Deepak Kumar⁴, Praveen Sharma⁶, Akhil Dhanesh Goel³, Manoj Kumar Gupta³, Suman Saurabh³, Shubham Rai⁷, Chunnilal Lawdiya⁷, Jinesh Saini⁷, Deepak Singh¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Microbiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
² Department of Surgical Oncology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
³ Department of Community Medicine and Public Health, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
⁴ Department of General Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
⁵ Department of Pulmonary Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
⁶ Department of Biochemistry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
⁷ Master of Public Health Scholars, School of Public Health, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

Abstract

We studied the pattern and duration of viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) shedding in 32 asymptomatic and 11 paucisymptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 cases. Viral RNA shedding in exhaled breath progressively diminished and became negative after 6 days of a positive reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction test. Therefore, the duration of isolation can be minimized to 6 days.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; asymptomatic; cycle threshold paucisymptomatic; viral shedding.