Omicron contagious for almost 6 days, Takeda drug shows promise as COVID treatment

According to a small study, patients that are infected with the Omicron virus of SARS-CoV-2 remain contagious for as much as patients were infected with earlier variants.

Researchers had taken blood samples from 56 newly-diagnosed patients that included 19 samples with Omicron infection and 37 samples with Delta infection. The samples taken from people were the ones that were mildly ill with flu-like symptoms and were not hospitalized. According to Dr Amy Barczak from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who had coauthored a report posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review noted that regardless of what variant it is or whether they had been vaccinated or boosted, the study participants went on to shed live virus for over 8 days.

She further noted that although it is not known how much live virus is needed to spread the disease, data suggests that people that had mild Covid-19 infection could be contagious for almost 6 days or even longer. Regardless of the variant or prior vaccination status, the decision on masking and isolation should take such information into account.

For Covid-19, a drug called Takeda angioedema shows promise. This is a drug that is used for treating blood vessel conditions called angioedema that showed promise in the treatment of Covid-19 in a lab experiment.

Icatibant was sold by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co as Firazyr that blocks a protein called bradykinin receptor b2 in the kinin system. The protein is regulated by ACE2 protein that is there on the cell surface that the Covid virus uses as a gateway for infection. As researchers analyzed the nasal cells obtained from newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients, what they found was elevated levels of bradykinin receptor b2 that led them to think if blocking that protein with icatibant would protect the airway-lining cells against the coronavirus, which to their surprise went on to reduce 90 per cent of the viral load and also protected the human airway cells from death on SARS-CoV-2-infection.