RALEIGH - More than 9,000 North Carolina residents are presumed to have recovered from COVID-19 as of May 11, according to calculations by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to establish a standard definition of "recovery" for COVID-19, and the long-term impacts of the virus on the respiratory system and other vital organs remains unclear.
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60% of lab-confirmed cases may have recovered
NCDHHS calculated that 9,115 North Carolinians — about 60.9% of the state's total lab-confirmed cases — have likely recovered from COVID-19.
That's based on a median recovery time of two weeks for COVID-19 patients who don't have to be hospitalized and 28 days for patients who are hospitalized, according to Dr. Mandy Cohen, Secretary of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.
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Those medians exclude patients who ultimately die from COVID-19, she added.
Each patient's actual recovery times could be shorter or longer based on a number of factors, the NCDHHS emphasized — among them the patient's age and underlying health conditions, as well as when they first seek treatment.
The 14 and 28-day figures were chosen since the time between sample collection and the resolution of symptoms hasn't been reported for all of North Carolina's COVID-19 cases, a May 11 release said.
Are people who have recovered from COVID-19 still contagious?
Experts still aren't certain exactly when during the course of recovery a COVID-19 patient is no longer able to transmit the virus to others.
Researchers have established that COVID-19 patients can infect others even before they experience their first symptom, such as a dry cough or fever.
Preliminary studies suggest that viral shedding — the mechanism by which viruses are spread — is highest at the very start of the illness for patients with mild cases of COVID-19 and declines at the onset of symptoms, according to the CDC and preprint studies on medRXiv.
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Are people who have already had COVID-19 immune?
It remains unknown whether someone who has recovered from COVID-19 can contract the virus again.
As the body fights off an infection like COVID-19, it produces proteins called antibodies that help the immune system identify each viral particle for destruction.
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After defeating some diseases, including the measles, the body continues to produce antibodies for that virus for the rest of its life — that's how the body "remembers" a disease and is immune to it.
Blood antibody tests are commercially available for COVID-19 and have been used to determine whether a patient has had the new coronavirus in the past.
But researchers are still unsure how long the body produces antibodies after recovering from COVID-19, and how strong their immunity is while antibodies persist.
Even people who have recovered from COVID-19 should abide by all social distancing mandates, public health officials say, and behave as though they could contract the virus again.
Elizabeth Anne Brown is the trending news reporter for the Citizen Times. Reach her at eabrown@citizentimes.com, or follow her on Twitter @eabrown18.
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