Coronavirus: WHO checks the risk of new infections!

WHO is now examining whether people can become infected with the coronavirus again after an illness.

Coronavirus: WHO checks the risk of new infections! – The most important thing to start with: The WHO is checking relapses of COVID-19 patients who were considered cured after negative tests. In South Korea, 91 patients who tested negative and were therefore healthy were reinfected with the coronavirus.

Immune after COVID-19?

Most scientists assume that if you have COVID-19 and recover, you are immune.
However, according to reports from South Korea, people who have recovered have tested positive for the coronavirus again. The WHO is now investigating whether it is possible to become ill a second time.

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Recurrence of the disease in South Korea

91 people in South Korea who were considered healthy after negative tests have now contracted COVID-19 again.

Joeng Eun Kyeong, director of the Korea Center for Disease Control KCDC, said it was more likely that the virus had been "reactivated" and these were not new infections.
Kim Woo-Joo, a professor of infectious diseases, expects the number of relapses to increase. Other experts suspect incorrect test results as the cause of the observations from South Korea.

Epidemiological investigations are currently continuing. Tests are used to determine whether people are still contagious to others after an infection or not.

Testing by WHO

The WHO is now examining relapses of COVID-19 patients who were considered cured after negative tests.

“We are in close communication with our clinical experts and are working hard to obtain more information about these individual cases,” the WHO said in a statement to Reuters about the unusual cases in South Korea.

It is important that the prescribed procedure is followed when assessing patients.
According to WHO guidelines, this states that a patient can only be discharged from the hospital if two coronavirus tests 24 hours apart have been negative. Further investigations are now necessary.

Herd immunity

Whether healthy people can become infected with the coronavirus again is of great importance. Many countries are basing their measures on the fact that people who have recovered from COVID-19 are immune to the virus and that this affects a large part of the population over time, so that a resurgence of the pandemic can be prevented.

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Tests with monkeys show immunization

Many virologists consider immunity after an infection to be “very likely”.

“We know that patients have an immune response, but we don’t know how long it lasts. We have only known about the virus since mid-January,” explains virologist Melanie Brinkmann from the Helmholtz Institute.

Researchers are in the process of finding a clear answer, and research with antibodies is essential.

Initial tests showed that antibodies could be detected in recovered patients. Tests with macaques also showed that after an initial infection with the coronavirus, no reinfection occurred, even though they were exposed to multiples of the virus. The monkeys were therefore immune.

Source: ORF / Tagesschau
Article image: Shutterstock / By joshimerbin