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A comment on Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing. Parent comment

Re:Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications fo... by LatteLazy on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @04:14PM (#22882492)
I'm never clear what asymptomatic means in this context.

Does it mean the period for which a patient is infectious before they become symptomatic?

Or do some people never become symptomatic?

And if it's the second, do they cease to be infectious like symptomatic individuals after a time? Or are they infectious long term (aka carriers)?

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Re:Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications fo... by nkohari on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @04:23PM (#22882586)
Asymptomatic means the person had no symptoms at the time of the test, and possibly never developed symptoms. They could also have been presymptomatic, in which case they subsequently developed symptoms after the test. This study didn't do any follow-ups to differentiate.
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Re:Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications fo... by LatteLazy on Wednesday April 15, 2020 @04:35PM (#22882704)
>presymptomatic

That makes sense and that's a useful word, thanks!

I've heard it takes about a week before you get symptoms and then they last for 2 days on average. So even if everyone developed symptoms only 22% of people with the disease would have symptoms on a given day...

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