An alarming number of coronavirus patients in China and around the world are testing positive after ‘recovering’ and being discharged from the hospital – with the disease reappearing weeks later in some cases, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday, Japan’s Osaka prefectural government revealed that a female tour-bus guide had tested positive for coronavirus for a second time – which comes on the heels of Chinese reports that discharged patients throughout the country were testing positive after their release from the hospital.
That said, China’s National Health Commission said on Friday that reinfected patients were not transmitting the disease to others. The two running theories is that COVID-19 is “biphasic” and lies dormant before reappearing, or that patients are not building sufficient antibodies to fight a new infection.
Experts say there are several ways discharged patients could fall ill with the virus again. Convalescing patients might not build up enough antibodies to develop immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and are being infected again. The virus also could be “biphasic”, meaning it lies dormant before creating new symptoms.
But some of the first cases of “reinfection” in China have been attributed to testing discrepancies.
On Feb. 21, a discharged patient in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu was readmitted 10 days after being discharged when a follow-up test came back positive. -Reuters
Deputy director of the infectious diseases center at the West China Hospital, Lei Xuezhong, told People’s Daily that hospitals had been using nose and throat samples to test patients, while new tests were finding the virus in the lower respiratory tract.
A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association which analyzed four infected medical personnel treated in Wuhan found that it was likely that some recovered patients would remain carriers even after meeting discharge criteria.
David Adams
Article URL : https://www.zerohedge.com/health/coronavirus-reappearing-weeks-later-discharged-patients?