Discussed in this episode:
- Early in the pandemic, studies showed the amount of SARS-COV2 in nasal swabs peaked right about the time people got their first symptoms — helping to establish that a lot of spread was attributable to pre-symptomatic people. A new study shows viral load is now peaking 4-5 days after symptom onset, possibly because widespread population immunity means symptoms appear sooner in the course of infection.
- The most immediate implication concerns how to use home tests, which are not sensitive enough to detect low levels of the virus: if you have symptoms, and test negative on a home test, you don’t want to rely on that negative home test result. You can try to confirm a negative result with a PCR test. (If you test positive on a home test you almost certainly *do* have COVID).
- The WHO is now recommending new influenza vaccines drop the component targeting Influenza B / Yamagatta, a strain which appears to have gone extinct when early COVID lockdowns slowed the spread of many other infectious diseases.
We’ll start taking listener questions again next week (which will happen Tuesday because Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day). Send your questions to [email protected]
Podcast music credit: Now Son by Podington Bear, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.