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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has not been examined for COVID-19 based on the advice of healthcare experts after his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau tested positive for the virus.

“It was explained to me that as long as I do not show any symptoms at all, there is no value to me being tested,” Trudeau said Friday, in a press conference where he was several metres away from reporters.

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Trudeau and his family are in self-imposed isolation for two weeks after Grégoire Trudeau was found to be showing symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. She later tested positive.

The situation faced by the prime minister reflects a wider uncertainty in Canada over when people should enter self-isolation, and whether the country is testing enough potential patients as a way to get a firmer grip on the virus.

For now, the World Health Organization has said that people showing no symptoms of COVID-19 are at “very low risk” of transmitting the virus. However, some very preliminary studies — including a recent paper that tested 135 confirmed cases in China and 93 in Singapore — suggest that infected people can potentially transfer the virus during incubation, a several-day period before major symptoms begin to emerge.