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Old 11-27-2020, 11:21 AM
Altavia Altavia is offline
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Originally Posted by graciegirl View Post
I don't disagree, but many of us wonder how long to wait to get tested to see if the virus incubated in us. In other words, WHEN after exposure is a person contagious to others IF they do catch it.


I’ve been exposed to COVID-19; how soon will I be contagious? | MIT Medical



While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public-health authorities put the incubation period for the virus at 2–14 days, most people who become ill develop symptoms between five and six days after exposure. This is about the same amount of time needed, on average, for a PCR diagnostic test to be more likely than not to return a true-positive result.

On the other hand, research suggests that people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are at their most contagious in the 24 to 48 hours before they experience symptoms. But you would still expect there to be a few days between the time a person is exposed and infected and the time they begin actively shedding virus. If we figure that infected people who become sick typically start experiencing symptoms a bit more than five days after exposure, we can calculate that infectiousness would, on average, begin rising sharply about three days post exposure. In other words, it’s safe to say that it would be exceedingly rare for anyone to transmit the virus earlier than two days post exposure; however, at some point after that, the risk would begin to rise significantly.