The first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection was reported by researchers at the University of Hong Kong in the last week of August. A ...
The first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection was reported by researchers at the University of Hong Kong in the last week of August. A few other anecdotal cases of reinfection have since emerged, including one from Bengaluru.
How exactly is a case of reinfection confirmed? What are the chances of being infected again after making a full recovery from Covid-19? What does it mean for long term immune response to the SARS CoV2 virus which is at the centre of the current outbreak?
Scroll.in spoke to Dr Shahid Jameel, a virologist who is the Director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University.
Does testing positive for a second time, weeks or months following a first infection and having seemingly recovered from it, necessarily mean the person has been reinfected?
Reinfection means that you were infected once, cleared the infection, and then you were infected again.
There could be an anomaly wherein the virus was very low when you were shown to be negative, and then next time around it was picked up in a test.
Whether it is the same virus that is surfacing again or it is a case of getting infected again by another viral event is the question. The only way to prove that is to see if...
