Data on viral levels point to immune evasion as a cause of the variant’s transmissibility.
Benjamin Meyer, a virologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, says he too was stunned by Grad’s results. “Naturally, you’d think that higher transmissibility must cause a higher viral load,” he says.
Meyer and his colleagues took the study a step farther: rather than measuring only viral RNA, they also measured the number of infectious virus particles on swabs collected from a separate group of almost 150 infected people . This more stringent method found no significant difference between the viral loads of vaccinated individuals infected with Omicron and those infected with Delta.The findings have implications for government policies on isolation after infection. Meyer’s team examined samples from people who had beenThey found that about half of the samples still held infectious virus five days after the individuals tested positive.
Such results are concerning, Grad says, because guidelines published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allow people infected with the virus to end their isolation five days after either testing positive or experiencing their first symptoms. The guidelines specify that people who have exited isolation must continue to
around others for five more days, but do not require a negative COVID-19 test to end isolation. The CDC did not respond toOmicron has made public-health decisions all the more difficult, Grad says. He and his colleagues also found more variability in viral load in individuals infected with Omicron than in people infected with Delta. “That means there’s no clear ‘one size fits all’ approach,” he says.
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