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Health personnel handle a crown test at a test center in a tent outside Skåne University Hospital in Lund. Photo: Johan Nilsson / TT via scanpix AP / NTB
South Korean researchers believe those who have had the corona virus cannot re-infect themselves, despite reports that the new ones are reinfected.
That is what the British newspaper The Times writes.
The researchers’ findings indicate that it is weaknesses in virus tests that cause reinfection of some, according to the newspaper.
The question is of crucial importance as to whether it is possible to obtain so-called flock immunity, a situation in which the majority of the population has had the virus and is no longer ill.
It was last month that South Korean health authorities announced that people who had been infected and declared healthy were reinfected. A total of 277 patients participated.
A crown test from a patient in Switzerland is ready to be sent to a laboratory. Photo: Laurent Gillieron / Keystone via AP / NTB scanpix
The news raised fears of mutations in the virus that could prevent patients from obtaining immunity, which would have hampered development of the vaccine and perhaps eliminated the possibility of obtaining immunity.
But Oh Myoung-don, who chairs the South Korean Central Clinical Committee for the Control of New Diseases, says the results that showed a newly proven infection are caused by deficiencies in the way the tests are performed.
The tests secure patient samples to reveal the genetic information of the virus, RNA. But tests can’t make the difference between active RNA and inert traces of RNA that can remain in the body after being fully informed.
It cannot cause chronic illness.
– RNA fragments may still exist in cells even when the virus is inactivated. Those who tested positive again were more likely to have the virus RNA already inactivated, a committee statement said.
The conclusion is in line with the findings of the South Korean health authority, KCDC, that the patients who were apparently newly infected were not infectious.
“The lifespan of airway epithelial cells has a half-life of up to three months, and viral RNA in cells can be detected by testing for one to two months after the cell has been killed,” says Oh.
It also says that the corona virus cannot cause chronic disease by staying inside the nucleus of human cells. Therefore, the virus, which leads to the crown of the disease, behaves differently than the HIV and hepatitis B viruses, which can be inactive and reactivate later.
– More studies are needed
In addition to reports that South Korean patients had been reinfected, scientists in Shanghai, China emerged last month, saying they had found surprisingly low levels of antibodies in patients who had had a crown.
Their study should have been the first systematic study of antibodies after coronary infection. In total, blood samples from 175 patients were analyzed, and almost a third of them found very low levels of antibodies. In some, the researchers found no antibodies, the South China Morning Post wrote.
But the researchers also said that more studies are needed to determine if people who have had coronary arteries are at risk of relapse or reinfection.
“The question of immunity is still very uncertain. It is mainly about how long you are immune and what variant of the virus you are immune to,” Espen Nakstad, Deputy Director of Health at the Health Directorate, told NRK in early April when he commented about the Chinese study. and messages from South Korea.
