How Long Do You Have to Be a Tech Sergeant Before Testing Again
In this Q&A, nosotros speak with epidemiologist Kelly Kamm most virus latency, isolation versus quarantine, contact tracing, and why medical guidelines keep to change.
Kelly Kamm is an epidemiologist and banana professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Michigan Technological University. Kamm's expertise has been vital to informing the University's response to the COVID-xix pandemic. Here, she explains some of the more complicated aspects of COVID-19 in a higher setting.
Want to Learn More nearly COVID-19? You're Invited!
Steven Elmer and Kelly Kamm — faculty in Michigan Tech's Kinesiology and Integrated Physiology Department — along with the Wellness Research Constitute, are didactics a COVID-19 course this semester. To increment community date and knowledge, Elmer and Kamm will host a Zoom town hall series as a component in the course. Community members are invited to the Zoom gatherings, which volition exist held Thursdays from 7 to 8 p.grand. and broadcast on 97.7 The Wolf (WOLV-FM). The showtime town hall will exist Thursday, Sept. 3, and sessions will continue weekly until December. three.
How Long Am I Contagious?
Q: What is the latency flow of the SARS-CoV-two virus, which causes COVID-19?
KK: The virus tin take between two and fourteen days for someone to develop symptoms or test positive from the fourth dimension they are exposed. This is called the incubation period. Many factors impact the range of the incubation catamenia. If y'all were exposed on Monday the 1st and had a COVID-19 test on the fifth, only about half the people who are infected will accept a positive exam or accept symptoms at that time. Simply because you test negative on 24-hour interval five does not mean that you lot are non infected; yous could withal test positive up to 14 days later the exposure.
What's the Difference Between Isolation and Quarantine?
Q: How does the incubation menstruation chronicle to how long a person needs to isolate or quarantine?
KK: If someone tests positive for the virus — whether or not they have symptoms — they are infected and must be isolated. Their time in separation is based on the infectious menstruation, which is how long they are able to spread the disease to other people. The infectious catamenia differs between individuals, but can be determined based on their symptoms and whether those symptoms are resolving, or a specified time catamenia if they tested positive but never develop any symptoms.
Q: So, what'due south the minimum a person would need to isolate if they have no symptoms?
KK: If they test positive, just have no symptoms, they will be under isolation for a minimum of 10 days. If they develop symptoms anywhere in that ten days, how long they stay in isolation depends on resolution of symptoms.
Q: Are you lot proverb that a person can be infectious to others as long as they have symptoms?
KK: Yes. The length of the infectious period due to the virus has a lot to do with the individual and their detail disease journey. Someone with a severe case volition have a much longer infectious period than someone with a mild case.
Electric current Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] guidance is that a fever has to exist entirely resolved for at least 24 hours with no medication to bring information technology down. Other symptoms (cough, loss of sense of odour, sore throat, shortness of breath) have to be improving and it must be at to the lowest degree 10 days since symptoms began.
The shortest time menstruation of separation is 10 days if there are minimal or no symptoms, but the isolation period can be much longer than that in severe cases.
Q: How is quarantine different from isolation, then?
KK: We quarantine people who have been exposed but we don't yet know if they are infected or not. Someone with COVID-19 is infectious for one to three days before they feel symptoms. The quarantine is meant to prevent someone who is infected from spreading the affliction during that menses when they are infectious just practise not know information technology. Because people can become positive for the virus anytime during a 14-mean solar day period afterward exposure, information technology is important to stay separated from others for that full quarantine flow.
However, if you have multiple people in a household, you can be in quarantine a long time.
If one of your roommates tests positive and you cannot completely dissever yourself from this roommate, you are continuously exposed to that roommate. That means that your last exposure, and solar day ane of your xiv-24-hour interval quarantine, begins on the last day your roommate is infectious. So, if your roommate recovers after 10 days, your separation from other people includes the 10 days your roommate was infectious plus an additional xiv days (24 days total).
If one of your roommates tests positive but you are able to fully separate that roommate from the residuum of the firm, your quarantine starts the day your roommate was isolated from you. But if a second roommate tests positive on day 10 of your quarantine menstruation, your quarantine volition reset because you have a new exposure. Every fourth dimension you have a new exposure to someone with COVID-19, your quarantine restarts, and you will demand to be in quarantine 14 days after your last exposure.
Q: If y'all exercise live with multiple roommates or family members and someone in the firm is in isolation, can you share bathrooms or other living spaces every bit long as y'all're non in the same room at the same time?
KK: No. The person in isolation must accept their own sleeping room and stay in that room. It is best if they accept a separate bathroom, but if that is not possible, there are strict disinfection and use guidelines that must be followed. Meals should exist left outside the individual'south sleeping room and no one else should use those dishes. You must remain totally carve up.
How Does the Virus Spread?
Q: Wow, that's intense. But I thought as long every bit yous remain 6 feet away and aren't in the aforementioned room for longer than 15 minutes, you won't catch the virus.
KK: Six anxiety apart for no more than than 15 minutes in an enclosed space is non a difficult and fast rule. Information technology's a good estimator, but non foolproof.
How Does the Virus Live on Surfaces?
Learn more about virus surface chemistry in this short video.
The novel coronavirus is typically passed to others through airborne spread. If you sneeze or coughing or droplets are formed when yous're talking or breathing hard, those droplets travel through the air. If they come into contact with the nose, mouth or optics of someone who is susceptible, that is a route of entry.
The closer you are to that someone, and the longer you stay there, the more likely it is for this to happen.
Another way yous can grab the virus is through indirect contact. If someone coughs into their paw and touches a doorknob, they may leave virus particles on that doorknob. If you lot impact that doorknob and and then touch your eyes, nose or mouth, the virus can enter your body.
The key to preventing indirect spread is to wash your easily immediately afterwards you touch things other people bear on. Make certain to cough into your elbow, non your hands. Don't impact your confront until you wash your easily.
How Does Contact Tracing Work?
Q: Michigan Tech is hiring people to work equally contact tracers to brand sure people who may accept been exposed can quarantine themselves to keep the virus from spreading. How are yous involved in contact tracing?
KK: I am helping recruit, railroad train, and manage a team of student volunteers who will aid the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department past conducting contact tracing in our campus customs.
About the Researcher
Q: I'chiliad happy to written report that at least 100 people have answered the telephone call to become contact tracers. But how many exercise you need?
KK: It is very hard to estimate how much fourth dimension or how many tracers we need. So many variables get into the time it takes to trace contacts.
Q: What practise the contact tracers practice?
KK: When someone tests positive for COVID-xix, the wellness department calls them and interviews them. The health department official asks most who the positive case might have been around during their infectious period to identify who meets the threshold level of a close contact who needs to be quarantined. The general definition of a close contact is someone within six anxiety of an infected person during the infectious period for at least 15 minutes.
Contact tracers work to notify the close contacts of the demand to quarantine and assistance connect those in quarantine with Michigan Tech and community resource they may need.
If you recollect you may exist a close contact, call the health department and they can help you determine if yous were. The health department notifies u.s.a. if close contacts include people from the campus community. Our campus team is also able to identify people who written report they are a close contact through the Daily Symptom Tracker.
It'south actually important to answer your phone or listen to your phone messages. This method to stop the spread of COVID-19 works best when a shut contact is placed nether quarantine equally soon after the exposure as possible.
Information shared with the contact tracing team is confidential. Nosotros do leave messages and there is a way to telephone call us back or we will keep trying. If you lot are called past a contact tracer, the telephone number will come up equally an MTU number with a 487 prefix.
Why Does the Science Continue Irresolute?
Q: Unfortunately, a lot of people are mistrustful of scientists and medical researchers right now. At that place's a lot of misinformation out there. Why practice medical and scientific guidelines continue irresolute?
KK: This is a brand-new affliction, so everything we are learning is new. Nosotros are working to understand not only the virus itself, but also what public health measures piece of work and don't work.
This is a coronavirus and scientists based a lot of the early information on SARS and MERS [coronaviruses that caused pocket-sized outbreaks in 2003 and 2012, respectively], nevertheless they are still very unlike viruses. We are continually refining and adjusting what nosotros know equally more information is available.
Q: To employ a metaphor, coronaviruses could exist compared to dog breeds. SARS-CoV-2 is a wolfhound, whereas MERS is a rottweiler. They're both dogs, but they're very different.
KK: Exactly. When you take something and so new, you have to build up the scientific cognition base. What's been said in the past that may be different at present is not misinformation — information technology'due south that we've learned more. It makes it very hard to empathize because advice does, necessarily so, modify.
For instance, I can't guess how many contact tracers I need because I don't know how many contacts a college student might take. We can use the information as we learn it to build on in the future.
In this age of, "If I can't get information technology in 2 seconds, it'due south so slow," nosotros must recall that science takes time. Public health is a scientific discipline.
Q: How long do y'all think it will be until there's a vaccine?
KK: The shortest time to become a vaccine has been four years; the boilerplate is ten to 15 years. The fact that nosotros recall nosotros might have a vaccine in just a year is scientifically pretty astonishing.
Scientists mapped the unabridged genome of the virus inside a month from when it was identified. It's amazing to look at how much we exercise know about this virus in such a short menstruum.
Michigan Technological University is a public inquiry university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than than seven,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for render on investment, the University offers more 125 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in scientific discipline and technology, applied science, computing, forestry, business and economics, wellness professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan'south Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
Source: https://www.mtu.edu/news/2020/09/i-have-to-quarantine-for-how-long-and-other-covid19-questions-answered.html
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