What to Do If You Become Infected With COVID-19
As the number of COVID-19 cases grows across the country, flooding hospital systems and causing new restrictions on economic activity in some states, it is important to remember one key difference, at least when it comes to your own place in the confusing pandemic confusion: the difference between infection. and impact.
It must be a little frustrating to know that a loved one or friend tested positive within a few days of your last interaction with them. After all, you can get a positive test result and walk away with symptoms, even if you’ve methodically washed your hands, socially distanced yourself, and wore a mask for months. Given our evolving knowledge of the virus, how it spreads, and the effectiveness of various preventive and therapeutic agents, it is understandable that you may not know what to do if you are potentially exposed to an infection.
Here are some key guidelines recommended by the medical authorities so that you can act accordingly if you have been exposed to a potential transmission.
Difference between contamination and exposure
The good news is that not all exposures lead to infections. It is possible to bump into someone who has tested positive – or who is a carrier of the virus but does not yet have a positive test result – and not be infected with it.
The definition of “exposure” refers to your physical intimacy with someone over a period of time. Most medical authorities point out that spending fifteen minutes with or without a mask within six feet of someone who tests positive, shows symptoms, or tests positive within 48 hours qualifies as exposure.
If for some reason he has not been beaten home during the last nine months of this ongoing plague, infection is indicated by a positive COVID test result or showing brand symptoms. While this is an effective method of containing the spread of viruses, testing is not complete without failure. A person with COVID can still test negative because the virus must build up over time so that it can be detected with a nasal swab or saliva sample.
As Harvard Medical School states:
If you get tested on the day of infection, your test is almost guaranteed to be negative because there are not enough viral particles in your nose or saliva to detect. You are less likely to get a false negative test result if you were tested a few days after infection or a few days after symptoms began.
This makes the prospect of infection even more dangerous, as you could potentially be exposed to the virus from someone who doesn’t know they have it. However, there are some important guidelines that medical authorities recommend if you think you have been exposed.
What to do if you’ve been exposed
It can and should be alarming if you find yourself in this camp, but there are active steps that need to be taken to better ensure the safety of those around you.
As the CDC advises, if you’ve been around someone who started showing symptoms two days after you last saw them, the protocol is to stay home for 14 days after your last contact with the person. with symptoms.
Or, as the agency expresses in its own language :
Stay home for up to 14 days after your last infection and always maintain a social distance (at least 6 feet) from others.
If you have been in contact with someone who tested positive within two days of your last contact but is still asymptomatic, the CDC recommends the same standard 14-day quarantine, starting from the day you think you were infected. …
You may be wondering about the 48 hour rule and whether it is an arbitrary number. This is definitely not the case. The overall incubation period for COVID is about 14 days, but in most cases, symptoms and / or a positive test result begin to appear within four to five days of infection, the CDC notes .
MIT Medical explains that while a person with COVID can become infected two days after infection, the chances increase significantly after 48 hours.
If we estimate that infected people who become ill usually begin to experience symptoms just over five days after exposure, we can calculate that infectiousness will, on average, begin to rise sharply about three days after exposure. In other words, it is safe to say that transmission of the virus earlier than two days after infection will be extremely rare; however, at some point thereafter, the risk will begin to increase significantly.
Another obvious thing to do if you feel like you’ve potentially been exposed: get tested. Although testing sometimes gives false results, it is an indisputable tool for containing the spread of the virus. Given that a virus usually has to accumulate on your system to be detected, it is a smart choice to get tested a few days after the expected infection. If you are not showing any symptoms, perhaps wait five days – more than enough for the virus to usually show results when tested – for the test to pass. If you are already showing symptoms but can recover on your own without immediate medical attention, stay at home for 14 days after your last suspected exposure.
According to the CDC , if you live or have recently spent time with someone who believes they have been exposed to COVID, you do not need to be quarantined, but you do need to monitor yourself for symptoms. If you or the exposed person develop symptoms, you should quarantine them.
The transmission and infection of COVID obviously depends on your personal circumstances, but some of the general rules of epidemiology can help you and your loved ones if you feel you have been exposed: stay at home for 14 days, limit your contact with other people to a threshold of six feet and complete the tests.
Over time, this will also pass, especially since the waiting time for the vaccine is decreasing every day.