It is a cause of worry for many patients including health care workers to receive positive test result for Corona Virus even weeks to months after they have recovered fully.

They are confused and their employers are more confused whether they should join their duties or not.

Mothers are more worried after recovery from disease ,when they should kiss their babies if test report is still positive.

RT-PCR test being used to diagnose Corona Virus Disease 2019 ,detects the pieces of RNA of virus.It can not differentiate between active and dead virus.So,this test is useful for the diagnosis of disease but not for the recovery from the disease.

There is a study of 9 patients suffering from COVID 19,in Germany.They put the sample after 8 days of onset of disease,into the culture.There was no growth of virus in the culture.Moreover,there was no  yield of subgenomic mRNA.These both are indicators of live virus which can infect others and capable of producing disease.It was concluded that if the number of Virus is less than 10000/ml of Sputum,it can not cause the disease..The study was published in NATURE

Resarchers from South Korea,centre for disease control, traced 285 patients who became negative and their isolation was terminated.They again became positive but non of them could transmit the disease to anyone even after converting to positive test result again.

According to the CDC guideline ,a patient is labelled negative only after 2 consequitive test results are negative,keeping in view so many false negative results.

But now it is a fact that some patients may remain positive months after the recovery from COVID 19.

On the other hand,some patients may become positive again after becoming negative.

These patients do not transmit virus that can cause disease to others.

REFERENCES;Doctors Wonder What to Do When Recovered COVID-19 Patients Still Test Positive – Medscape – Jun 09, 2020.