COVID/Coronavirus - Questions answered

Answers to questions asked in the COVID/Coronavirus Q&A thread will posted in this thread. Answers will not necessarily be provided in the order they were asked.

Beanzy said:

Has it been demonstrated that Covid-19 survivors' plasma can be given to Covid sufferers to improve their survivability?

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Plasma from survivors has started to be trialed in COVID patients. It was discussed in the TWiV - 596 podcast.

One published study and an article on medRxiv tested the approach in patients without severe adverse effects. Please bare in mind that the medRxiv is a preprint server meaning that the paper has not been peer reviewed.

Although plasma therapy does provide a route of treatment it can have adverse effects as discussed in this article.

In short, it's being tested and seems to have some potential benefit but it will take time to fully evaluate safety and usefulness.

mlm said:

We have a handful of N95 masks (gave the rest away). If it sits for several days between use will that effectively neutralize any virus contamination? Is there any other way to easily decontaminate it so it can be reused?

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There have been studies done assessing the length of time that SARS-CoV-2 remains active on different types of surfaces but to my knowledge this was not specifically tested on N95 masks. A critical factor to remember is that the quantity of virus on the mask will be unknown. Infection will be dose dependent. As an example, if 1000 virus particles are needed to infect a person and the half life of the virus (amount of time to lose infectivity on a surface) is 2 days, for 10,000 particles it would take 8 days for the mask to reach potential safety. These are made up numbers as an example. But, it makes it hard to say that leaving the mask unused for a week will make it safe to wear if the wearer was in an environment with high levels of coronavirus.

There are methods being investigated to inactivate the coronavirus on masks so that they can be reused. The CDC has a whole page on the decontamination of face masks (filtering facepiece respirators). You might find your FFR model in Table 4.

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating the reuse of face masks. But, it could be possible to decontaminate a face mask if needed. If the user does chose to decontaminate a mask they must be sure they understand the decontamination procedure so they don't injure themselves.

Lazerus said:

I've been digging around pretty much non stop, but maybe you've come across a better article/study/data pool about length of time to be considered recovered?

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That really sucks it's taking so long to recover. According to a report (top of page 14) from the WHO it can take up to six weeks depending on disease severity. It's not clear to me from the report if that's complete recovery, return of full lung function. As SARS-CoV-2 imparts a fairly nasty respiratory disease the lungs will take time to recover and the length of time will depend on disease severity. Poor lung function is going to make you feel like crap. I hope you start to feel better soon.

phil turdwater said:

from how i understand there are two strains of covid19- if you caught and endured one strain, does that imply immunity/resistance to reacquiring both?

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This is a misconception. There are not two strains. The answer has been really nicely addressed in this podcast by This Week in Evolution.

Snaggy said:

Question Doc_Slo

I read that IgG shows up about 10 days after onset of fever in SARS-02 but some patients with SARS-19 shed RNA much longer. Is it too pessimistic to think antibody titers might not always indicate a resolution of the infectious stage?


https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(14)63847-7/pdf

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The IgG response to SARS-CoV-2 does appear to track like any normal response to a coronavirus infection with neutralizing antibody rising after 2-3 weeks post infection. Although RNA is detectable after symptoms have resolved it's not clear if this is from infectious virus or residual genomic RNA being cleared from the body. RNA can persist for a while in the absence of infectious virus. The guidelines at the moment are to continue to self isolate for 72 hours after symptoms have resolved. At any other time it would be really helpful to determine if the RNA was from infectious virus but that's asking a lot at the moment.

littlebeast said:

question for you - silver lining-wise, do you think that the general public’s education and experience during the COVID-19 situation will reap benefits related to future flu season health management (keeping in mind that the flu season routinely takes many lives each year)? it’s almost like people are finally paying attention to something they should have been paying attention to previously for a good long while. and the training everyone has been subjected to has the potential to save lives even after the COVID-19 pandemic has run its course.

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One can only hope. I do think we'll see a surge in the numbers of high school children thinking about careers in infectious disease research, whether it's at the molecular scale or the population level. It would be nice if the funding of research could be increased. A lot could have been done prophylactically if the funding was there. There's a statistic floating around somewhere that the $2T stimulus budget is larger than the entire budget of the NIH since its inception; an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

Whether the population as a whole will be more mindful of flu health management, that's a tough question to answer. Certainly handwashing and social distancing will be more on people's minds when someone clearly has a case of the flu. There could also be some new knowledge with the treatment of pneumonia caused by flu but that will take a little while longer.

The pandemic might also encourage wider uptake of the flu vaccine but this will depend on whether a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is promptly available and works. These types of severe uncontrollable pandemics don't happen very often so the population memory tends to forget about events like these. There has been a very long era of great population level health when it comes to infectious diseases, so much so, that the anti-vaccine movement has gained a lot of traction. Scourges of past viral infections; small pox, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox are a distant memory. Hopefully, the outcome will be a better informed general populous and they'll recognize the need for research and vaccination.