Is there a risk of infection for “time and space attendants”?

On March 25, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council held a press conference to introduce scientific, accurate and persistent efforts to handle the epidemic Prevention and control work related situations. At the meeting, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, answered questions about time and space.

“What is the risk of infection for non-intensive and sub-intensive risk personnel such as space-time accompaniment? What are the difficulties in the management and control work? What measures should be taken to control it?” Accompanying” is sometimes called “intersection of time and space”, which generally refers to people who have stayed together for a period of time in the same time and space grid as the confirmed new crown patient within 14 days. For example, if an infected person has been to a certain place within 14 days, and someone has intersected with him/her in the trajectory of these 14 days, he or she may be identified as a space-time follower. Screening of “space-time companions” can identify potentially infected groups to the greatest extent, and include more people who have “space-time overlap” and may be infected into key investigations, so as to achieve early detection and advance prevention and control.

Wu Zunyou said that the identified time-space companions are usually further investigated to determine the exact method, specific time and actual distance of time-space companions to determine the risk of infection. If the investigation has made it clear that they are neither close contacts nor sub-close contacts, there is no risk of contracting the new crown.

According to reports, in the actual epidemic prevention and control, a large number of space-time attendants are often found in a short period of time, and it is impossible to investigate each space-time attendant in time. Time-space companions who have not completed the risk investigation should be quarantined at home or at designated locations in accordance with the prevention and control requirements until the investigation is completed or the time-space companion state is lifted.

Source: Red Star News