A reactivation of the virus due to lack of immunization or due to a virus mutation? In South Korea, the newly detected infection raises questions in people who have already survived the disease.
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Can you get coronavirus several times? This question arises for the first time as Chinese patients who are tested negative when they leave the hospital and later tested positive again. This phenomenon is now underpinned by new numbers released last Sunday by the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) to get presented.
People in South Korea fall ill again
On April 19, it will be announced that 16 more people have contracted Covid-19 again, an average of 13 days after the quarantine ended Yahoo News. The news agency reported on April 13 Reutersof 116 similar cases in South Korea.
At the present time, the total number of relapsed people in South Korea is already 179. It is surprising that the new cases are the most common in the group of 20 to 29 year olds with 41 cases. In the 50- to 59-year-olds, there are only 32 cases.
Immunology is still largely unclear
During a press conference, Jung Eun-Kyeong, the director general of the KCDCthat the exact reason for these positive tests is still unknown. However, it holds a “reactivation” of the virus more likely than a new infection. In the case of a virus disease, the patients react very well with the body’s own immune defense and the formation of antibodies, as the researchers can observe. In view of this, it was not possible to develop Covid-19 more than once.
The possibility of the virus mutating must also be examined – as is the case with the flu virus, which is why the flu vaccine has to be changed every year. So far, however, no change has been observed in the corona virus. “The SARS-CoV-2 appears to have a limited genetic mutability compared to influenza,” explains Jean-Claude Sirard, researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, already talking to in March La Voix du Nord. However, he does not lean too far out of the window: “The immunology of the virus is not yet well known.”
Several theories are examined
Jung Eun-Kyeong is more likely to assume that the new positive tests are cases in which false negative results have occurred before, since the tests are not 100% reliable. It is possible that even in symptom-free patients there is still a weak viral load in the body. The virus “sleeps” so to speak and can later lead to a deterioration in health if it gets into the lungs. The KCDC will therefore conduct an epidemiological investigation, according to its head:
While we believe reactivation is the most likely reason, we are conducting an in-depth study on the subject. There were numerous cases in which a patient tested negative one day during treatment and positive again the next day.
South Korea is one of the first countries to be affected by the pandemic, but “only” has 10,635 infections and 232 deaths thanks to an extremely extensive testing system. The country is now the third safest country in terms of the Covid 19 epidemic. These new developments in South Korea are therefore now being followed with particular interest.
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