Coronavirus May 'Reactivate' in Cured Patients, Korean CDC Says

[RandySF]

The coronavirus may be “reactivating” in people who have been cured of the illness, according to Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 51 patients classed as having been cured in South Korea have tested positive again, the CDC said in a briefing on Monday. Rather than being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these people, given they tested positive again shortly after being released from quarantine, said Jeong Eun-kyeong, director-general of the Korean CDC.

“While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this,” Jeong said. “There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”

A patient is deemed fully recovered when two tests conducted with a 24-hour interval show negative results.

The Korean CDC will conduct an epidemiological probe into the cases, Jeong said.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/coronavirus-may-reactivate-in-cured-patients-korean-cdc-says

[greenjar_01]

1. ...

[Loki Liesmith]

2. Eh probably a positive/false negative/positive sequence

For someone who was still sick

[MacKasey]

3. Need Antibodies test

Till there is wide spread testing of the amount of antibodies in a person's blood, everything is guess work

[Yonnie3]

4. I had read that negative nasal swabs were possible when the infection was still active in the lungs

It was weeks ago and I'm unable to find the article.

Deep lung samples were positive and nasal swabs negative.

Deep lung samples are obtained with invasive methods, i.e. bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and fibrobronchoscope brush biopsy, so are not common.

[uponit7771]

5. 51 out of 10,000 sounds like noise

[orwell]

6. The short anwer is...

...anything is possible with a novel virus. Simply put...we don't know what this virus is capable of.

Herpes lies dormant in nerve ganglia and then out of nowhere creates new lesions.

Until we are able to really understand this virus, which will take a lot of time and expertise, we don't know what it is capable of.

That's why "opening up the country" is such a dangerous idea until we have either a vaccine or a solid treatment regimen.

That is also why "herd immunity" is a very dangerous experiment.

What seems to work is SIP and social distancing. Until we know more we are juggling with hand grenades.