Something crucial we thought we knew about the coronavirus might be dangerously wrong

[Chris Smith]

• A new coronavirus study says that the time it takes for COVID-19 symptoms to appear might be even longer than 14 days in some cases.
• Health agencies including the CDC and WHO offer similar incubation estimates for the novel coronavirus, saying that symptoms can appear up to 14 days after exposure to the pathogen.
• Isolation and quarantine policies are based on those estimates, so this revelation could be a dangerous realization.

The novel coronavirus turned out to be a perfect storm. The virus mutated in such a way that it was able to spread rapidly, turning COVID-19 into a rare pandemic event. First of all, the virus is very resilient and can spread in warm and cold climates, which means transmission isn't seasonal — the US COVID-19 epidemic is proof of that. Secondly, the virus triggers symptoms shared by various other illnesses, making a diagnosis based on clinical observations nearly impossible; a PCR test is the best way to confirm COVID-19 at this time. Thirdly, not all patients develop symptoms, but people start to spread the virus even before the onset of symptoms. That means many people are contagious long before they realize there's something wrong.

Finally, the virus can take anywhere between 2 and 14 days to incubate, making it even harder for authorities to conduct contact tracing campaigns and for individuals to keep track of potential exposure. All these factors allowed the pathogen to spread like wildfire across the country and around the world. Now, a new study offers us more potential bad news about coronavirus’s modus operandi. It appears that the incubation period might be even longer than the 14 days that health agencies keep repeating, climbing as high as 34 days in some cases.

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Something crucial we thought we knew about the coronavirus might be dangerously wrong originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 29 Oct 2020 at 08:56:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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