Offering few details, the White House doctor says Trump is no longer contagious. – The New York Times

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The start date of Mr. Trump’s symptoms has also remained unclear. By Dr. Conley’s assessment, Mr. Trump would have needed to show signs of his illness on Wednesday, Sept. 30, for Saturday to qualify as 10 days after the onset of symptoms. Most people stop being infectious by the 10th day after they start feeling ill, according to the C.D.C.

“This evening I am happy to report that in addition to the president meeting C.D.C. criteria for the safe discontinuation of isolation, this morning’s Covid P.C.R. sample demonstrates, by currently recognized standards, he is no longer considered a transmission risk to others,” Dr. Conley wrote. “Now at day 10 from symptoms onset, fever-free for well over 24 hours and all symptoms improved, the assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus. In addition, sequential testing throughout his illness has demonstrated decreasing viral loads that correlate with increasing cycle threshold times, as well as decreasing and now undetectable subgenomic mRNA.”

Several experts expressed skepticism at the wording describing Mr. Trump’s diagnostic tests, which did not explicitly categorize the president as “negative” for the coronavirus. P.C.R., a laboratory technique that detects the virus’s genetic material, can give researchers a rough sense of how much virus remains within a person’s body, or the viral load. Dr. Conley’s note suggested Mr. Trump’s viral load was dropping, but appeared to still be detectable.

The subgenomic mRNA mentioned by Dr. Conley is a part of the virus that can be detected by laboratory techniques, and that suggests the presence of actively replicating virus, said Susan Butler-Wu, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Southern California. But “there are zero cleared tests that look at subgenomic mRNA” from the coronavirus, she added, which means the procedure is “experimental at this point.”

Another, more traditional, approach to determine whether Mr. Trump still harbored actively replicating virus in his body might be to take a sample from the president’s airway and see if the coronavirus could be grown from the sample in a lab. But this technique was not mentioned in Dr. Conley’s memo.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/world/offering-few-details-the-white-house-doctor-says-trump-is-no-longer-contagious.html

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