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New doubts about the immunity of Covid-19. Having already contracted the virus would not protect you from a possible even more serious relapse. The proof is a boy from Nevada who, after getting tired of coronavirus a first time, a second was infected with consequences even more serious than the first. The case study in “Lancet Infectious Diseases” raises new questions about immunity developed after infection.
To draw attention to the subject ofimmunity This is the case of a 25-year-old from Nevada, in the United States. The young man had shown the first symptoms at the end of last March, but had only tested positive for the swab in mid-April. On April 27, the patient no longer had any symptoms, testing negative in the two tests on May 9 and 26. Declared cured without the need for hospitalization, the 25-year-old nevertheless showed new symptoms on May 28, with a rapid worsening and the positivity to Covid-19 discovered on June 5. The man, who suffered from hypoxia, was forced to hospitalize because his lungs were unable to oxygenate his body. Now the patient is better, but his case has opened an unusual scenario.
As confirmed by the doctors, the young man had no previous health problems or immune defects that would have made him particularly vulnerable to Covid-19. Let the boy be infected twice, of different virus strains, the analyzes confirmed it. Comparison of the genetic codes of the virus in samples taken from the patient revealed sequences too different to be caused by the same infection.
For scientists, the doubt is concrete. Once recovered from Covid-19, one is not always protected against the virus. “Our results indicate that a first infection may not necessarily protect against future infections. – commented Mark Pandori, from the University of Nevada – The possibility of reinfection could have significant implications for our understanding of Covid-19 immunity“. Those who have already contracted the virus, therefore, must follow anti-contagion rules and regulations to prevent a relapse. Studies to date, in fact, still cannot resolve the thorny link between coronavirus infection and immunity. A relationship about which too many doubts persist today and which could affect our daily lives for a long time.
The race to the vaccine It is in full swing and the first doses are expected in our country at the end of the year. But very little is known about the immune capacity of the vaccine. To date, the truth is that reinfection appears to be a rare event. Those who have relapsed, out of more than 37 million confirmed cases worldwide, are very few. In most cases the reinfection was milder, while in the case of a patient from Ecuador and the young American, the second infection was much more serious.
