According to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 51 COVID-19 patients who had earlier been declared cured in South Korea, tested positive with the novel coronavirus again, Bloomberg reported.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the Korean CDC, said that the virus may have ‘reactivated’ in these cases because they tested positive just a little after being released from quarantine. Reactivation, instead of reinfection, could be the reason behind the results.
An epidemiological probe will be conducted into the cases to understand the possible explanations behind testing positive again.
Other Countries Where Recovered Patients Tested Positive for COVID-19
Confusion regarding the probability of reinfection gained ground when such cases began to be reported from China, Japan and South Korea.
A study from China, for instance, looked at four medical workers in Wuhan who had recovered from the infection. They tested positive thrice consecutively after once having been released from quarantine.
Experts from around the world have theorised multiple alternate explanations for such relatively ‘rare’ cases. These include errors in testing and diagnosis, false negatives, low viral load of the disease post-recovery and early discharge, among others.
The possibility of reinfections and what it would mean for our understanding of the virus and its mutation would have implications for vaccine development. As knowledge about the virus is still evolving, many questions about it remain unanswered. Further studies into such cases will help provide a clearer perspective on reinfections and reactivation. You can read more about all we know about this probability here.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
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