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Researchers have identified the first case of an American patient who was reinfected with the new coronavirus.
According to the report, the anonymous 25-year-old man from Reno, Nevada, tested positive in April after showing mild illness.
He became ill again in late May and developed a more serious COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.
Forty-eight days after his first positive test, he received a second.
“This study probably represents a clear example of reinfection … reinfections are possible, which we already knew, because immunity is never 100 percent,” Dr. Kristian Anderson, professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps, told Reuters. Research in La Jolla, California.
Health experts worry that a future vaccine won’t be very effective if reinfection is possible in such a short period of time.
Researchers say the first known case of coronavirus in the U.S. is a 25-year-old man from Reno, Nevada, who first tested positive in April after developing mild illness and then fell ill in May. Pictured: A medical staff member treats a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas on July 28.
He had to be hospitalized and tested positive on June 5, marking 48 days after his first positive test. In the picture: a scientist at the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory conducting tests
Laboratory tests determined that the virus strains for each disease were slightly different, indicating a true reinfection (top)
During the first illness, the individual had symptoms including a sore throat, nausea, headache and diarrhea, according to the pre-print study.
He tested positive on April 18. His symptoms disappeared on April 28 and he received two negative tests on May 9.
Just a few weeks later, on May 31, the man reported symptoms that included all the symptoms he had before, plus a fever and feeling light-headed.
Five days later, the patient’s condition worsened so much that he was hospitalized and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Blood tests performed by hospital staff showed the man had antibodies to the virus.
Researchers say the man was not immunosuppressed or taking immunosuppressive medications.
A team from the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, and the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory said they were able to demonstrate through sophisticated testing that the virus associated with each instance of the Reno Man infection represented genetically engineered strains. different
Because the genetic makeup of the strains is different enough, this represents a true reinfection.
Investigators worked with the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Science Unit to determine that the samples were from the same patient.
They emphasized that reinfection with the virus is likely rare, but said the findings imply that initial exposure to the virus may not result in full immunity for everyone.
“We don’t know how often reinfections occur and how that might change over time,” Anderson said.
“Before we have larger studies that illuminate these questions, we cannot conclude what a single case of reinfection means for the longevity and robustness of COVID-19 immunity and relevance to a future vaccine.”
Mark Pandori, director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, said this finding is likely not re-infection.
“It is just a finding, but it shows that a person can become infected with SARS-CoV-2 a second time,” he said in a statement.
“If reinfection is possible in such a short time, there may be implications for the efficacy of vaccines developed to combat the disease. It can also have implications for herd immunity ”.
Cases of suspected reinfection have emerged in other parts of the world, but questions have been raised about the accuracy of the tests.
Earlier this week, researchers at the University of Hong Kong reported details of a 33-year-old man who had recovered in April from a severe case of COVID-19 and four months later was diagnosed with a different strain of the virus.
Furthermore, two European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, were reported to have been reinfected with the virus.
However, unlike the American man, the other patients developed mild cases of the virus during their second time with the infection.
“Hopefully the second time people have much milder symptoms, or ideally no symptoms,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Institute for Global Health, told NBC News.
This is because the immune system should recognize the virus and be able to respond much more strongly than the first time.
Jha says the Hong Kong patient’s case is “completely consistent with that.”
Pandori called for caution considering the many unknowns that still surround our knowledge of immune responses to COVID-19.
“After one recovers from COVID-19, we still don’t know how much immunity builds up, how long it can last, or how well antibodies play a role in protecting against reinfection,” he said in a statement.
“If you’ve had it, you can’t necessarily be considered invulnerable to infection” a second time.
