LISBON, June 17 (Xinhua) -- The University of Porto announced on Wednesday that it will launch studies to find out what is the period in which the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurs, causing COVID-19, as well as the evolution of the immunological profile of patients.
"This is extremely important because it can make it less time for people to stay in the hospital since it is not known how long the virus stays in the body," said researcher Margarida Tavares, one of the specialists in infectious diseases at the Institute of Public Health of the University of Porto, according to Portuguese Lusa News Agency
"As soon as we know that a person does not reinfect and we know how long he can infect, it is a gigantic advance," he said, announcing that the research time will be six months.
The project, which will be financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology, will take samples to determine the viral load in respiratory secretions, culture viruses, determine a series of inflammatory markers and titrate the antibodies.
"We will follow these patients over time, to understand all these dynamics both in our response and in the way the virus behaves in the face of this response and in our production of antibodies," Margarida Tavares was quoted as saying.
In the last 24 hours, Portugal registered another COVID-19-related death and 336 new cases of infection, taking the nationwide death toll to 1,523, and the total number of confirmed cases to 37,672, respectively. Enditem
