A doctor is encouraging people who had coronavirus to abstain from sex or use condoms if further trials show the disease is passed on by sex.
A study of 38 patients found that six of them, including two who had recovered, had Covid-19 in their semen according to the Mirror.
British experts pointed out that viruses such as Ebola and Zika can also be carried in the semen of men who have recovered from the illnesses.
Dr. Shixi Zhang, from the Shangqiu Municipal Hospital, wrote in the journal JAMA Network Open: “The survival of SARS-CoV-2 in a recovering patient’s semen maintains the likelihood to infect others.”
Professor Richard Sharpe, from Edinburgh University, called on scientists to establish how long the virus can stay in the sperm.
He added:
This finding raises the possibility that Covid-19 might also be transmissible via semen and thus via sexual contact, perhaps including during the recovery phase.
As reported in the Mirror, Allan Pacey, professor of Andrology at Sheffield University also said:
It shows that RNA for the virus responsible for Covid-19 can be detected in the semen of a proportion of 16 percent of men with a confirmed infection. This opens up the possibility that one route of infection may be through sexual contact, although this was not confirmed in the paper.
Earlier, it was said that coronavirus is not sexually transmitted, however, the new development shows otherwise. Further research is being carried out.
Source: Guardian Newspaper
