Science

De Chang, Guoxin Mo, Xin Yuan, Yi Tao, Xiaohua Peng, Fusheng Wang, Lixin Xie, Lokesh Sharma, Charles S Dela Cruz, and Enqiang Qin

SARS-CoV-2 (previously 2019-nCoV) has infected >167,000 patients and killed >6600 people. It has been reported that a patient in Germany had high viral titers after the resolution of fever and infected two of the close contacts after the resolution of symptoms. In the wake of these cases, it is still unclear how long the patient was virus positive after the resolution of the symptoms. In this study, we aimed to determine the time kinetics of viral clearance in reference to the resolution of symptoms in 16 patients treated in Beijing, China, and show that half of the patients with COVID-19 were viral positive even after resolution of their symptoms.