With the coronavirus making people scared for their lives, a recovered patient to isn’t guaranteed to stay immune from the virus for the rest of his life. This comes after the world’s first COVID-19 re-infect case was brought to light in Hong Kong. The man in question caught into the deadly virus after battling against it in April. Scientists called this the first confirmed COVID-19 case of re-infect, more alarming as it occurred within 4 months of its first infection.
The newly discovered patient was reported to be suffering from another bout of SARS-CoV-2 after getting detected at the airport this month. The 33-year-old was traveling back to Hong Kong from his tour to Europe.
According to researchers from the University of Hong Kong, the patient, who is an information technology worker, was infected with two different strains of the virus that was found after analyzing his genomic sequence.
However, he was only detected through this airport screening because he did not show any symptoms of the disease suggesting that he might be infected with a milder variant. Researchers believed that this may likely mean that “subsequent infections are milder.”
Kwok-Yung Yuen and his associates said on August 24th, “Our findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may persist in humans,” in their researched work, approved for getting published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal. Furthermore, they continued saying that just like the coronaviruses that cause the common cold, etc., SARS -CoV-2 might also follow the same trend and remain viable in the patient’s body, circulating in the blood. This can happen “even if patients have acquired immunity via natural infection or via vaccination”.
With patients testing to be positive for COVID-19 after several weeks even though the symptoms have disappeared Re-infect,
Scientists yet haven’t completely understood the reason behind the testing of a patient after several weeks even though their symptoms have disappeared. They are finding it difficult to tag it either as a remnant of the virus, re-infection, or a fresh infection of the virus.
The Hong Kong man’s detection has been confirmed as “the world’s first documentation of a patient who recovered from Covid-19, but got another episode of Covid-19 afterward.”
Corey Smith, head of translational and human immunology at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane said that without the appearance of symptoms, it will prove to be tough to identify the survivors of this re-infection.
Smith’s emailed statement read, “Because he showed no symptoms on the second infection, it is likely that, although the virus has managed to establish infection, his memory immune response has likely prevented any symptomatic disease. This does suggest that natural infection may provide protection against disease, but not reinfection.”
The problem which lingers majorly is the fact that a re-infected patient is still eligible to spread the virus to unexposed people, much like a carrier.
According to Thomas File, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and chair of infectious diseases at Summa Health, a hospital system in Akron, Ohio, reinfections are most likely to occur, but the question here doesn’t revolve around the possibility of occurrence. He said that they need to find as to “how long after the initial infection might a re-infection occur?”
In his Monday’s interview, Mr. File said that a patient’s safety against the reinfection will depend on the individual himself as it varies amongst different people, depending on the supremacy of their immune system, the character of the virus exposed to for the second time and whether the patient had developed symptoms from its first exposure or infection to the virus or not.
“We know that if you look at the seasonal endemic coronaviruses, the amount of immunity can be as low as four, five, or six months to maybe up to a year or two,” he said.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on Covid-19 said in her briefing with the media on Monday that the majority of the patients of the virus develop an immune response to the coronavirus, including those who had a milder variant.
She highlighted that there’s a need to document the reports similar to the Hong Kong one, but these cannot be used to “jump to any conclusion”. Ms. Kerkhove said that to land at any result or an appreciable inference, it is important to study a large number of cases of the same type to give a better understanding regarding the quality and durability of the neutralizing antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in recovered patients.
