Chinese virology researchers have discovered that genetic material of the new coronavirusstrain, 2019-nCoV was discovered in the stools and rectal swabs of patients confirming that the virus also can be transmitted through the digestive tract.
The new finding was made by scientists from the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences after noting that some patients infected with the coronavirushad diarrhea early in the disease, instead of a fever, which is more predominant.
It was seen that most of patients in Wuhan that contracted the coronavirushad diarrhoea as one of their symptoms.
This means that the pathogen might be transmitted along the faecal-oral route, not just from coming into contact with virus-laden droplets emitted from a sick person's cough or exhaled air.
Physicians have focused on respiratory samples from pneumonia cases to identify coronavirus patients, but they might have ignored diarrhea, a less apparent potential source of the spread.
It was also noted that diarrhoea occurred in about 10 to 20 per cent of patients afflicted with a related coronavirusthat causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS.
In one significant case in Hong Kong during the SARS epidemic, hundreds of cases at Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens housing complex in 2003 was attributed to a virus-laden aerosol plume emanating from an individual infected with the SARS coronavirus.
The implications of these findings are enormous as a patient with the coronavirusand having diarrhea can use a public toilet, and the flushing of the toilet can help disseminate the unseen virus all over the toilet surfaces and even in the surrounding air. As these coronavirus can survive outside of a host for as long as 5 days at room temperature and even longer at cooler temperatures, public toilets can also become a place where individuals can easily contract the disease.
Readers are to note that this is not fake news nor is it any attempt to disseminate news articles for sensational purposes as the data was released by the Chinese researchers and there are more than 48 published studies in credible medical journals indicating how viruses can be spread by toilet usage. Here are about 11 prominent research studies.
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