What is contact tracing and how does it help fight COVID-19?
Updated: 11:49 AM EDT Apr 25, 2020
Yes. We're back answering more of your questions about Corona virus. I continue to get flooded by them. We're gonna hit as many as possible joining us today. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of the Division of infectious Diseases at Mass General Hospital. Dr. Wollensky is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Welcome back, Dr Walensky. Thank you so much for having me. Let's get right to what we're hearing the term contact. Tracing that it's critical to not only open the country back up, but also to halt the spread of the virus. What is contact tracing? How does it help? And what does it take to do it? So it turns out that this disease is it can be transmitted before you have symptoms. So generally, it's recently thought that people can transmit disease up to two days before you have symptoms. So if a person were to develop symptoms today, we would want to know who they had been exposed to for the 48 hours before they develop symptoms. Because those people are potentially at risk of getting disease themselves. Brenda Rankin wants to know if someone is a carrier and that person was never tested. Is that person always a carrier? Does the virus ever leave the individual? What will be done to keep this from becoming a vicious circle? It's a good question. So when we do the NP swab that needs a foreign jail swab to test for virus and for disease, that virus is active in your knees affair ings. And we believe for around 20 days there are people who hold that to carry that virus for longer. And we've seen it out of out of out word of 30 and 40 days. I know people who have Kobe 19. I think we all do by now. And they keep asking me, Okay, I felt better a few days ago. I feel like I'm good now. When can they start going outside? Right is a great question. So the CDC guidance suggests that you can sort of be cleared in one of two ways. One is seven days after your positive test and at least three days symptom free. So if you'd your started feeling better a day seven than by Day 10 you could probably go out. We keep hearing this is a respiratory virus, but many are still unclear about one thing. Gail Shooter Allen asks. Do mosquitoes Transfer Cove in 19? Is this something else we should worry about? What I will say is, we don't believe that this is a virus that is transmitted by blood. And that means, you know, generally we believe it's a respiratory virus. And so, while we do, we have found the virus in blood. Generally, things that are transmitted by mosquitoes are transmitted through blood. And so I think the jury still out. But I'm hopeful that that's not gonna be a big problem. Dr. Walensky, thank you so much for being with us. My pleasure. Thank you for having me for you at home. Here's how you can send me your questions on Facebook at Rawson reports on Instagram and Twitter. You can find me at Jeff Rawson. We look forward to hearing from you back to you.
What is contact tracing and how does it help fight COVID-19?
Updated: 11:49 AM EDT Apr 25, 2020
Questions about what it will take for things to go back to normal have started to come in. Jeff Rossen was joined by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital to answer those questions. What is contact tracing and how does it fight COVID-19? How long do people who have tested positive have to wait to go outside again? Can mosquitos transfer the coronavirus from person to person? Jeff and Dr. Walensky answer those questions in the video above. We know you have a lot of questions about the coronavirus. Each day, we'll seek to answer them, by consulting our database of experts to get you accurate information on a range of topics. Check back tomorrow for another round. Submit a question of your own here.
Questions about what it will take for things to go back to normal have started to come in. Jeff Rossen was joined by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital to answer those questions.
What is contact tracing and how does it fight COVID-19? How long do people who have tested positive have to wait to go outside again? Can mosquitos transfer the coronavirus from person to person?
Jeff and Dr. Walensky answer those questions in the video above.
We know you have a lot of questions about the coronavirus. Each day, we'll seek to answer them, by consulting our database of experts to get you accurate information on a range of topics. Check back tomorrow for another round. Submit a question of your own .