Patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 and seemingly recovered have been readmitted to the hospital after testing positive for the virus again. South Korean officials announced seems to be hitting the news.
The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was only discovered a few months ago, scientists are still trying answer questions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating the reports of patients testing positive after being released from treatment, but said it has no findings yet.
The most daunting question is whether you can get re-infected or not. Experts say the body’s antibody response, triggered by the onset of a virus, means it is unlikely that patients who have been infected with virus can get re-infected so soon after contracting the virus.
Instead, testing positive after recovery could just mean the tests resulted in a false negative and that the patient is still infected. A positive test after recovery could also be detecting the residual viral RNA that has remained in the body, but not in high enough amounts to cause disease.
Even after the virus is dead, the nucleic acid (RNA) fragments still remain in the cells is what scientists are stating .The patients generally were not symptomatic at the time of their second positive test.
Does recovering from COVID-19 make you immune is another question. With other coronavirus strains, experts say the antibodies that patients produce during infection give them immunity to the specific virus for months or even years, but researchers are still figuring out if and how that works with COVID-19.
Time will tell on coronavirus strain its evolutions and body reaction towards the disease. We can only hope that a vaccine will come out soon so as to build immunity against this infection.