Indian-origin scientists have found that children infected with the Omicron variant remained infectious for a median time of three days after testing positive for the virus, stated a copy in IANS.
“We're basically saying five days is more than sufficient; public-health and education leaders may consider shorter durations,” said study co-author Neeraj Sood, Director of the COVID-19 Initiative and a senior fellow at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center.
It was found by the study that the median time of infectivity was three days, with 18.4 per cent of children still infectious on day five and 3.9 per cent infectious on day 10.
“We want to protect the other children in the school who could potentially get infected, but at the same time, we don't want to disrupt education for the child who is infected, given the amount of disruption that's already happened,” said Sood, who is also a professor at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.
“The duration of infectivity is an important parameter in figuring out what the optimal duration of self-isolation should be,” he says.
The study hopes to spread awareness among policy-makers as to how long must a child be isolated when they contract COVID-19. For the study, they examined nasal swabs from 76 children in Los Angeles County who were between the ages of 7 and 18 and tested positive for Covid-19.
“The virus will keep mutating,” Sood noted and added, “We need to continue doing studies like this because the next variant may have a longer or shorter duration of infectivity.”
