A new study suggests possible reinfection COVID-19. Here’s what to know

Preliminary research published on Monday before proposing can COVID-19 twice, but experts say the news is not so as the title may seem to arrive. The new research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, details about the case of a 33 year old man who lives in Hong Kong. It first tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and symptoms such as cough, sore throat, fever and headache developed. He made a full recovery, but once again positive for COVID-19 tested, while at home from Europe arrived in mid-August. This time has no symptoms. The researchers based in Hong Kong behind the study say that the fall of man is the first example shown to re-infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 There have been other documented cases of patients most sometimes tested positive for COVID-19, but it is unclear if they really are newly infected, or if a part of the virus lingers results genetic materials inside the body for repeated positive tests. was, however, the virus sequence showed patients in Hong Kong by two different strains of SARS-CoV-infected 2, suggests sick twice in action. But in a way the case is actually encouraging, says Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “There is no need to panic reinfection of this news,” says Iwasaki. “Although it has been reinfected … this is a good example of how immunity is for the function in a person.” So Iwasaki means that the first human infection probably protected him enough that he has no symptoms during its second infection develop. There is no guarantee, all the patient’s immune system reacts in this way, Iwasaki says, but it’s a promising sign. It ‘difficult to draw radical conclusions from an apparent case of reinfection, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. (He also notes the paper was distributed without the raw data researchers, making it difficult to assess the science.) A possible red flag is that the researchers found that patients in Hong Kong for protein antibody dispatches body did not test positive for the fight against infection and help prevent future infection-after his first meeting COVID-19 (according to the study, the patient must develop antibodies after his second positive test.) and ‘possible that the When you first get sick, it was tested too early to present at a low level for the detection of antibodies, or have been missed by the test, the study finds. But if it really has not developed antibodies that his case is more likely to be an anomaly, as an example, since most of the patients develop at least some antibodies, says Rasmussen. Studies have shown that levels of antibodies after infection crown quickly reduce in the coming months, but researchers do not yet know how well or how long COVID-19 antibodies provide immunity. Unfortunately, the case of Hong Kong patients did not help, educate. “We can not make statements about the people who do it” for testing positive antibodies, says Rasmussen. It is also not clear if the man was contagious during his second brush with the crown. The amount of virus in his system, he suggested, can pass on to others, but there is no evidence that it did. This is an important question, says Iwasaki. If patients infected are contagious even if asymptomatic, herd immunity the point where enough immunity of a population against a disease is its dissemination would slow difficult to achieve without a vaccine. The study is an important starting point for reinfection crown understanding, but there is more data is used to draw general conclusions. “It ‘already reported more than 24 million cases to date,” said the World Health Organization Maria Van Kerkhove at a briefing on Monday. “And we need something to see how [the possibility of reinfection] at the population level.” If reinfection must be carried out jointly says Rasmussen, who might be a case for the vaccine and those who have recovered from COVID-19. But at the moment it is difficult, the results of the journal beyond scales of all wants to apply if they have COVID-19 have had or not to wear a mask and keep practicing social distancing.
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