A Covid-19 infected person generally spread the disease by various ways. But how many days later the infected person starts to spread the disease to others? From evidence, it was shown that the disease takes 14-21 days to recover. Another query is, up to how many days the disease can infect other person from the infected one?
Duration of Contagiousness of a COVID-19 patient?
The COVID-19 patient can start spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus to close contacts as early as 2-3 days before symptom onset. The contagiousness reaches a peak at the symptom onset, and gradually subsides with resolution of symptoms, that is usually in 5-10 days (1).
However, WHO recommends period of isolation of a maximum of 13 days from symptom onset (2), because rare case can spread the COVID-19 as long as 13 days from symptom onset.
1. Article Contact Tracing Assessment of COVID-19 Transmission Dynamics...
2. https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/criteria-for-releasing-covid-19-patients-from-isolation#:~:text=It%20is%20important%20to%20note,days%20since%20symptom%20onset.
