As per Dr. Kelvin Kai-Wang To, the microbiologist who led the work, the man had shown mild symptoms for the first time, but there was no symptom the second time. The infection came to the fore at the time of screening and testing at the Hong Kong airport.
Even though the paper has been accepted by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases but not yet published and experts have warned of any conclusion until the final results are available.
What does the study reveal?
The man was detected with the coronavirus in March and carried symptoms of fever and headaches also spent two weeks in a hospital and never expected to test positive again just 142 days later.
As per the MIT Technology Review, scientists at Hong Kong University on the basis of genomic analysis of the virus, reveal the man got covid-19 a second time, and are calling his case “the first instance of human reinfection” with the novel coronavirus.
“It shows that some people do not have lifelong immunity” to the virus if they’ve already had. We don’t know how many people can get reinfected. There are probably more out there,” he added.
What are the concerns?
It has raised several questions including whether people who have had Covid-19 are immune to new infections and for how long. All this will also have an impact on the vaccine development and key decisions pertaining to complete opening of work, school and social activities.
Even if someone can be infected a second time, it’s not known if they have some protection against serious illness, because the immune system generally remembers how to make antibodies against a virus it’s seen before.
It’s not clear how different a virus needs to be to trigger illness, but the new work suggests that “Covid’ patients should not be complacent about prevention measures” and should continue social distancing, wearing masks and other ways to reduce infection.