Monitoring and predicting viral dynamics in SARS-CoV-2-infected Patients

shaoqing wen; Yi Wang

SARS-CoV-2 viral dynamics revealed that:1) the viral load in lower respiratory tract (LRT; such as sputum) is generally higher than upper respiratory tract (URT; such as nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal) [1] and, in the upper respiratory tract, higher viral loads are detected in the nose rather than in the throat [2] ; 2) the viral loads in SARS-CoV-2-infected patients peaked soon after the onset of symptoms, resembling influenza-infected patients and distinct from SARS-CoV-infected patients [1] [2] [3] [4] ; 3) viral loads detected in asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic patients indicate the transmission potential in the early phase of infection [2] . However, there are many details that remain puzzled. For example, 1) some patients have presented positive chest CT findings showing multifocal ground-glass changes, but they had negative RT-PCR results at that time [5] ; 2) some patients have rapid changes in viral loads during the window of infection, with the RT-PCR results sometimes positive and sometimes negative [2] [3] [4] ; 3) few recovered patients (absence of clinical symptoms and radiological abnormalities and . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.