Patients who recovered from COVID-19 but tested positive again are shedding dead lung cells, not active virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This dismisses concerns of short-term reinfection for now.
As South Korea gained control over its COVID-19 outbreak, reports of 116 recovered patients testing positive again baffled researchers. Similar cases surfaced in China and Japan, prompting a key question: Can you catch COVID-19 twice?
Experts quickly leaned toward lingering viral traces rather than true reinfection. Virologist Florian Krammer from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, noted, "I'm not saying reinfection is impossible, but in this short time it's unlikely." Even mild infections, he added, "should leave at least short-term immunity against the virus."
These reports prompted WHO to investigate. A spokesperson told AFP: "We are aware that some patients test positive after clinically recovering. But based on recent data, these patients are expelling remnants from their lungs as part of recovery."
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, echoed this in a BBC interview: "It's dead cells from the lungs causing positive tests. It's not a contagious virus, not reinfection, not reactivation. This is part of the recovery process."
While data shows infected patients develop antibodies within three weeks, granting short-term immunity, bigger questions linger: Are we fully immune post-infection? If so, for how long? "We don't have an answer," Van Kerkhove emphasized.
Immunity varies by virus—lifelong for measles, months to years for SARS. For SARS-CoV-2, long-term data is still emerging.
Source: AFP
