ReviewThe Journal of infection2020
The duration of infectiousness of individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Review in The Journal of infection, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 89 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
89 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 170 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Rise of Wearable Devices during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Pooled it
- COVID diagnostics by molecular methods: A systematic review of nucleic acid based testing systems.Indian journal of medical microbiology · 2021Pooled it
- Effects of a time-use intervention in isolated patients with coronavirus disease 2019: A randomized controlled study.PloS one · 2023Trial
- The role of mouthwash sampling in SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases : official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology · 2021Trial
- Efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern 202012/01 (B.1.1.7): an exploratory analysis of a randomised controlled trial.Lancet (London, England) · 2021Trial
- Ebola virus disease in the modern era: pathogenesis, therapeutic advances, vaccine strategies, and global health preparedness.Infection · 2026Review
- Dissecting the effect of single- and co-infection of TB and COVID-19 pathogens on the sputum microbiome.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Graph neural network surrogates to leverage mechanistic expert knowledge towards reliable and immediate pandemic response.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Risk Factors of Requiring Tracheostomy in COVID-19 Patients: A Retrospective Analysis of Intubated Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- A composite symptoms severity score based on survey self-reports as a predictor of SARS-CoV-2 infection and viral load.BMC infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Airway epithelial SARS-CoV-2 infectious and repair responses: relationships to age, sex, and post-COVID pulmonary syndromes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Accounting for contact tracing in epidemiological birth-death models.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Modeling the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic and the efficacy of different vaccines across different network structures.PloS one · 2025Article
- Review
- A case of late-onset organizing pneumonia following COVID-19 infection in a post-kidney transplant patient.CEN case reports · 2024Article
- Review
- Kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 infection biomarkers in a household transmission study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Cost effectiveness and decision analysis for national airport screening options to reduce risk of COVID-19 introduction in Uganda, 2020.Cost effectiveness and resource allocation : C/E · 2024Article
- Analysis of two sequential SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks on a haematology-oncology ward and the role of infection prevention.Infection prevention in practice · 2024Article
- Potent induction of humoral and cellular immunity after bivalent BA.4/5 mRNA vaccination in dialysis patients.NPJ vaccines · 2024Article
29 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo summarise the evidence on the duration of infectiousness of individuals in whom SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid is detected.
methodsA rapid review was undertaken in PubMed, Europe PubMed Central and EMBASE from 1 January 2020 to 26 August 2020.
resultsWe identified 15 relevant studies, including 13 virus culture and 2 contact tracing studies. For 5 virus culture studies, the last day on which SARS-CoV-2 was isolated occurred within 10 days of symptom onset. For another 5 studies, SARS-CoV-2 was isolated beyond day 10 for approximately 3% of included patients. The remaining 3 virus culture studies included patients with severe or critical disease; SARS-CoV-2 was isolated up to day 32 in one study. Two studies identified immunocompromised patients from whom SARS-CoV-2 was isolated for up to 20 days. Both contact tracing studies, when close contacts were first exposed greater than 5 days after symptom onset in the index case, found no evidence of laboratory-confirmed onward transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
conclusionCOVID-19 patients with mild-to-moderate illness are highly unlikely to be infectious beyond 10 days of symptoms. However, evidence from a limited number of studies indicates that patients with severe-to-critical illness or who are immunocompromised, may shed infectious virus for longer.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.