First Covid-19 Reinfection Has Been Documented (statnews.com) 168
phalse phace writes: Researchers in Hong Kong on Monday reported what appears to be the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection, a 33-year-old man who was first infected by SARS-CoV-2 in late March and then, four and a half months later, seemingly contracted the virus again while traveling in Europe. The case raises questions about the durability of immune protection from the coronavirus.
There have been scattered reports of cases of Covid-19 reinfection. Those reports, though, have been based on anecdotal evidence and largely attributed to flaws in testing. But in this case, researchers at the University of Hong Kong sequenced the virus from the patient's two infections and found that they did not match, indicating the second infection was not tied to the first. There was a difference of 24 nucleotides -- the 'letters' that make up the virus' RNA -- between the two infections. Experts cautioned that this patient's case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months.
There have been scattered reports of cases of Covid-19 reinfection. Those reports, though, have been based on anecdotal evidence and largely attributed to flaws in testing. But in this case, researchers at the University of Hong Kong sequenced the virus from the patient's two infections and found that they did not match, indicating the second infection was not tied to the first. There was a difference of 24 nucleotides -- the 'letters' that make up the virus' RNA -- between the two infections. Experts cautioned that this patient's case could be an outlier among the tens of millions of cases around the world and that immune protection may generally last longer than just a few months.
