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PHOTO: Reuters
The first disease from another strain probably led to a sufficiently protective immune response.
The reinfection of a Hong Kong man with COVID seems very bad news, but infectious people are not much surprised and find a positive side in it. When a coronavirus infection recurs, it appears to be mild.
The story, described in a scientific study, reported that the 33-year-old man first tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and developed symptoms including a cough, sore throat, fever and headache. He’s fully recovered, but again tested positive in a routine return survey from Europe in mid-August. Everyone is surprised because this time he had no symptoms.
The case is the first proven example of reinfection with SARS-2, the virus that causes COVID. There are other cases described, but it is unclear if they are actually reinfected or if genetic residues of the virus have been retained in their body, leading to repeated positive tests. In the case of the Hong Kong citizen, however, scientists have read the genome of the virus and discovered that the man was infected with two different strains of SARS. Therefore, it is considered proven that the person has indeed fallen ill twice. This can happen during the winter and with the flu.
The case is really encouraging, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, told Time. According to her, there is no need to panic. The first illness probably elicited protective immune reactions, which turned out to be sufficient for the man to have no symptoms during the second infection.
“There is no guarantee that everyone’s immune system will react in this way,” says Professor Iwasaki, “but it is still a promising sign.”
It is shameful that after the first COVID, the man did not produce antibodies. According to the study, your result for these protective proteins is positive only after your second positive test. It is possible that after the first illness, the test was too early for the antibodies to be “detected” or that there were too few and they failed the test. But if the person has not really developed antibodies, their case may be an anomaly, not the rule, since most patients develop at least some antibodies, says virologist Angela Rasmussen.
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