Is it possible to be re-infected with coronavirus

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker studied all the available information.

Like any psychologically challenging topic, the story of a pandemic forces people to go through five stages of experience made popular by Dr. House: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Denial (“No virus exists!”) And anger (“Take off your masks, why are you scaring people ?!”), many have already passed. They are followed by the bargaining stage.

On forums and in social networks, users share with each other details of what they think are unusual ARVIs suffered last winter: with high unbreakable temperature, weakness, headache, obsessive cough - in general, all the symptoms of COVID-19.

All this gives people hope. Like, if I have been ill, it means that immunity has already developed and I will not get infected with the coronavirus again.

Lifehacker explains why you shouldn't be so confident.

Could it be that many have already been ill

Yes, absolutely. This version is adhered to not only by the regulars of social networks, but also by some serious scientific and government structures. For example, representatives of the University of Oxford.

Professor of theoretical epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, together with colleagues at the end of March, put forward a version that the coronavirus had infected up to half of the UK population in winter. But supposedly most of the citizens had been asymptomatic or mildly ill, like a common ARVI, and now the country already has “herd immunity”. This means that tough quarantine measures that are killing the economy may be weakened.

True, the Oxford study has yet to undergo scientific peer review. In addition, its results have been challenged by other scientists. However, this bold scientific work has borne fruit.

The Guardian reports that the UK government has already purchased 3.5 million test kits. The goal is to conduct a large-scale serological study of the country's population to find out how many people are already immune to COVID-19.

Other states are also starting to move along the same path. Germany plans to test 100,000 people to try to find antibodies to coronavirus infection in their blood. According to the test results, people who are found to be immune to COVID-19 may begin to issue a kind of certificates confirming their safety for society. Such people will be able to leave quarantine and return to work earlier than others.

The United States also hopes to create test systems that will identify citizens who are immune to the coronavirus.

The theory really looks great. But there is a problem.

Is it possible to be re-infected with coronavirus

It is not excluded. Doctors still do not know how strong and complete the formed immunity to COVID-19 is. They have only indirect data at their disposal. And they are very contradictory.

So, a small study of another coronavirus, which also causes the common cold, showed that people can be re-infected in a year, but their symptoms will be weaker.

Scientists have also studied the closest relative of the Wuhan coronavirus, the SARS virus. It turned out that IgG immunoglobulins - the same antibodies associated with stable immunity - appeared in the blood of patients 21-30 days after the first symptoms and persisted for at least 2 years.

A recent study was conducted on macaques. Chinese scientists infected the animals with SARS ‑ CoV ‑ 2, and then, when they recovered and recovered, they injected the same virus again. This time, the macaques had almost no symptoms, and antibodies to coronavirus were found in their blood. This study has not been peer reviewed, but it looks promising and optimistic. But there is also a fly in the ointment.

The South China Morning Post reports that up to 10% of Wuhan patients who have recovered from the coronavirus appear to have re-infected later. Tests for COVID-19, which were negative upon recovery, then re-tested positive after a week and a half.

The facts of reinfection still require rechecking: it may well turn out that some tests were simply flawed and gave a false result. However, there is another explanation.

Elitza Theel MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic

Even if antibodies appear in your blood, this does not necessarily mean that you are immune to the disease. It is necessary to assess whether the antibodies provide an adequate level of protection. There is no exact information on this matter today.

In general, it is far from the fact that antibodies to the SARS ‑ CoV ‑ 2 coronavirus appear at the same time and are as resistant as antibodies to the SARS causative agent. Immunity to COVID-19 may be longer. Or, on the contrary, it may turn out to be short-term - such that you can easily pick up a dangerous coronavirus infection again, having recovered from it just a couple of weeks ago.

It remains only to repeat the theses, which for almost three months in a row have been cited by experts from the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): we still do not know much about SARS-CoV-2. The data is updated and changed literally every day. Therefore, it is important to be careful and observe the self-isolation regime.

Coronavirus. Number of infected:

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