NATIONAL BRIEFING
When the coughing stops is probably a better sign of when a swine flu patient is no longer contagious, experts said after seeing new research suggesting the virus can spread many days after a fever ends. Swine flu appears to be contagious longer than ordinary seasonal flu, the experts said.
“This study shows you’re not contagious for a day or two. You’re probably contagious for about a week,” said Gaston De Serres, a scientist at the Institute of Public Health in Quebec.
He presented one of the studies at an American Society for Microbiology conference in San Francisco.
More than 1 million Americans have been infected with swine flu, and nearly 600 have died from it, the CDC estimates.
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