The term “viral shedding” has been thrown around in the media coverage of SARS-CoV-2 or its better known disease, COVID-19. Let’s take a step back and explore what it means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the name suggests, “viral shedding” is formally defined as the release\/expulsion of viral progeny (after reproduction) from the host. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a microscopic scale, the host could be a cell, a bacterium, etc. On a macroscopic scale, the “host” would be the human\/person would could literally “shed” viruses: through droplets when coughing\/sneezing (airborne droplets or aerosol spread); other body fluids\/secretions; urine\/feces; or using their hand to touch something (contact spread).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person who is displaying symptoms (i.e. symptomatic) can shed, but so can people who are not showing symptoms (i.e. asymptomatic). When we think about asymptomatic individuals: they may never have been infected before; they may be silent carriers; and they may have been sick and recovered (asymptomatic) but still able to transmit the pathogen. Asymptomatic shedding and spread depends on the characteristics of the pathogen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The term “viral shedding” has been thrown around in the media coverage of SARS-CoV-2 or its better known disease, COVID-19. Let’s take a step back and explore what it means. As the name suggests, “viral shedding” is formally defined as the release\/expulsion of viral progeny (after reproduction) from the host. On a microscopic scale, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,53,55,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019ncov","category-epidemiology","category-infectiousdiseases","category-virology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5260,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions\/5260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrativewellnessandmovement.com\/iwmbasicscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}