ABSTRACT
Background: Understanding the COVID-19 disease course in terms of viral shedding is important to assist in providing a tailored isolation and treatment practice. Therefore, the current study aimed to estimate time to viral clearance and identify determinants among SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals admitted to Millennium COVID-19 Care Center in Ethiopia. Methods: A Prospective observational study was conducted among 360 randomly selected SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals who were on follow up from 2nd June to 5th July 2020. Kaplan Meier plots, median survival times, and Log-rank test were used to describe the data and compare survival distribution between groups. Association between time to viral clearance and determinants was assessed using the Cox proportional hazard survival model, where hazard ratio, P-value, and 95% CI for hazard ratio were used for testing significance Results: The Median time to viral clearance was 16 days. The log-rank test shows that having moderate and severe disease, one or more symptoms at presentation, and presenting with respiratory and constitutional symptoms seems to extend the time needed to achieve viral clearance. The Final Cox regression result shows that the rate of achieving viral clearance among symptomatic patients was 44% lower than patients who were asymptomatic (AHR=0.560, 95% CI=0.322-0.975, p-value=0.040). Conclusions: Presence of symptoms was found to be associated with delayed viral clearance implying that symptomatic patients are more likely to be infectious and therefore, attention should be paid to the practices regarding isolation and treatment of COVID-19 patients.