A sequel to a movie that you didn’t want to see in the first place is one thing, like Ghost Rider 2 after Ghost Rider. A sequel to having a COVID-19 infection would be something completely different.
You may think that the one “positive” of testing positive for the COVID-19 causing coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) and surviving would be that you won’t get infected by that virus again. At least not during this pandemic. Ah, but is this assumption really true? Will you indeed be immune to the SARS-CoV2 after you’ve recovered from a COVID-19 infection? Some reports out of Japan and China seem to suggest otherwise.
For example, Daniel Leussink and Rocky Swift reported for Reuters about a female tour bus guide in Japan who tested positive for the virus after recovering from a COVID-19 infection.
Does this case actually prove that re-infection with the virus is possible? Or was this just a mistake in the testing? Or did the person have a particularly weak immune system so that she couldn’t generate immunity? After all, one case can be an accident, an aberration, an anomaly, an aardvark in a sea of anemone.
Well, oops something like this happened again, according to a more recent NHK-World Japan report. This time it was a man in his 70’s, who first tested positive for SARS-CoV2 on February 14 while on a Diamond Princess cruise ship. After being transferred to a medical facility in Tokyo, he stayed there until testing negative for the virus. On March 2, he left the facility and traveled home via public transportation. However, the man eventually began feeling sick with a fever, which prompted him to go to a hospital on March 13. The following day he tested positive for the virus again.
Then there’s the February 14 article from Caixin, a Beijing, China-based media group, that was entitled “14% of Recovered Covid-19 Patients in Guangdong Tested Positive Again.” Umm, 14% would seem more like an “ooop” than an “ooops.” This CGTN news warned of such reinfection possibilities:
Remember though, these are news reports and not scientific studies yet. While the reappearance of Nicholas Cage with a flaming skull riding a motorcycle may not call for additional scientific studies, all of these cases certainly do. First, scientists need to confirm whether the test results were indeed accurate. Remember, no test is perfect. If people can screw up a drink order, they can certainly mess up a medical test. Even if a test is performed properly, you could still get a positive result when you don’t actually have an infection. On the flip side, just because you test negative doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no way that you are carrying the virus. That’s why a doctor may test you multiple times to be sure of a result.
Secondly, doctors and other scientists need to double-check or triple-check that each of these patients actually got re-infected with the virus rather than had an infection that simply lasted a long time. What if, for example, the cruise passenger and the tour bus guide each had fairly long infections and just happened to have intervening false negative test results? (Text courtesy Forbes)