Hong Kong Man Becomes First Confirmed Case of COVID-19 Reinfection

While we know what precautions to take to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (hand washing, social distancing, wearing masks), there is still a lot we don’t know about the actual virus.

At first, there was the hope that if you got COVID-19 and survived you would become immune to it. Yet, we’ve all been told to continue taking precautions even if we had a case of COVID-19 because there was no proof that we could or could not be reinfected.

It turns out that reinfection is possible which makes it very important to continue to take precautions against getting and spreading COVID-19 regardless of whether or not you have had the virus.

In Hong Kong, a 33-year-old IT worker contracted COVID-19. He had a moderate case, recovered and was discharged from the hospital in April. Then, in August, after a trip to Spain, the same IT worker tested positive for COVID-19. This time, he was asymptomatic.

At the University of Hong Kong, researchers have been studying these two cases of coronavirus, and they said, “Many believe that recovered Covid-19 patients have immunity against re-infection because most developed a serum neutralising antibody response. However, there is evidence that some patients have waning antibody level after a few months. Our findings suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 may persist in the global human population as is the case for other common cold-associated human coronaviruses, even if patients have acquired immunity via natural infection.”

 

 

Researchers also recommended considering vaccination even for people who have already had COVID-19 one time.

Does it surprise you that there is now a proven case that someone was reinfected with COVID-19?