How long after a fever is a child still contagious?
We don’t have absolute data, but we do know that in a child who truly has the H1N1 infection, that individual is still infectious after resolution of fever. For how long that individual will remain infectious, that’s a different issue that we don’t know. Most fevers in children will resolve in about four days, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. If we look at shedding pattern for seasonal influenza, it is not unusual for young children to have virus in their nasal passages for up to two weeks. For the novel H1N1 pandemic virus, we don’t have precise data, but it would not surprise me that some individuals will still be infectious at seven days, at 10 days, at 14 days.
