A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases (The Lancet Infectious Diseases) plots the first confirmed case of Covid-19 back in the United States - the country hardest hit by the pandemic - and suggests that exposure to the virus may not guarantee immunity in the future.
Paris France:
Covid-19 patients may experience more severe symptoms the second time they are infected, according to research released on Tuesday that confirms that it is possible to contract the deadly disease more than once.
Find out about the information published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases (The Lancet Infectious Diseases) plotting the first confirmed case of Covid-19 back in the US - u. s . Hardest hit by the pandemic's help - and indicates that propaganda for the virus cannot now guarantee immunity in the future.
The patient, a 25-year-old man from Nevada, contracted two different types of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, within 48 days.
The second contamination was greater than the first, which resulted in the affected person being hospitalized with oxygen support.
The newspaper pointed to four other confirmed cases worldwide, with one patient each in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Ecuador.
Experts said the prospect of re-infection could have a profound effect on how the world fights through the pandemic.
In particular, it should influence research for a vaccine - the holy grail of present-day pharmaceutical research.
"The possibility of infection can have important implications for our understanding of Covid-19 immunity, especially in the absence of an effective vaccine," said Mark Banduri, of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and lead author of the study.
"We want more research to find out how long the immunity might also remain for humans that have been detected for SARS-CoV-2 and why some of these two-dimensional infections, although rare, appear to be so severe."
Vaccines work by stimulating the body's natural immune response to specific pathogens, and providing it with antibodies to fight future waves of infection.
But it is not at all clear how long the Covid-19 antibodies will last.
For some diseases, such as measles, the infection conferred immunity for life. For other pathogens, immunity may be fleeting at best.
The authors said the American patient may have been exposed to a very high dose of the virus the second time, which led to a more severe reaction.
Alternatively, it may be a more virulent strain of the virus.
Another hypothesis is a mechanism known as antibody dependent reinforcement - that is, when the antibodies actually increase subsequent infections, such as dengue fever.
The researchers noted that re-infection of any kind is still rare, with only a few confirmed cases among the tens of millions of cases of Covid-19 globally.
However, since many cases are asymptomatic and thus it is unlikely that they will initially test positive, it can be impossible to know if a particular Covid-19 case is the first or second infection.
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