Nature: "Shedding of viral RNA from sputum outlasted the end of symptoms. Seroconversion occurred after 7 days in 50% of patients (14 days in all), but was not followed by rapid decline in viral load." Not clear if viral RNA load is active infective virus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2196-x

This is a critical article with some gaps though:

You make antibodies to #coronavirus

BUT

You continue to shed virus particles / RNA AFTER the development of antibodies and AFTER symptoms subside at about 14 days.

The biggest question is if these viral particles are just RNA or are they infective. That is not clear to me from the abstract. Possibly in the manuscript behind the PayWall.

IF these particles are infective, this means that even after 14 days, even after symptoms are gone, even after antibodies develop, an employee may be shedding potentially infective viral particles.

The load of virus is unclear as is the clinical consequence of this load.

The positive news is that they could not culture active virus from stool and urine, albeit in a small number of 9 patients.

Bottom line: Can someone get access to the article and see if they were able to culture viable virus from these late samples, or was it just #coronavirus RNA.

Thanks for directing me to the download button!

Below is the bottom line clinically; but how easy is it clinically to get an estimate of viral load?