‘Recovered’ patients test Covid-positive
South Korea finding may prove relapses
South Korea reported Friday that 91 recovered coronavirus patients have tested positive for the disease again, raising questions over health experts’ understanding of the pandemic.
The prospect of people becoming infected for a second time is of international concern, as many countries are hoping that infected populations will develop sufficient immunity to prevent a resurgence of the pandemic.
The reports also suggest the virus may remain active in patients for much longer than was previously thought.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention ( KCDC) has sent a team to the city of Daegu, the worsthit area, to investigate why patients there are testing positive again.
Preliminary findings are not expected until next week, but Jeong Eun- kyeong, the KCDC director, raised the possibility that the virus may have been “reactivated” in people, rather than the patients being reinfected.
False test results could also be at fault, other experts said, or remnants of the virus could be in patients’ systems without posing a risk to them or others.
“There are different interpretations and many variables,” said Jung Ki- suck, professor of pulmonary medicine at Hallym University. “The government needs to come up with responses for each of these.”
South Korea was hailed as a success story after its swift implementation of a mass testing regime halted the spread of the virus and led to a far lower fatality rate than the global average.
The country had one of the worst outbreaks outside China in the early stages of the coronavirus spread but has brought the situation under control in the past two months. Friday, it reported 27 new cases, the lowest figure since daily cases peaked at more than 900 in late February, according to the KCDC. The death toll rose by seven to 211, it said.
Nearly 7,000 South Koreans have been reported as recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Daegu, which accounts for more than half of all South Korea’s total infections, reported zero new cases for the first time since late February.
However, the new reports of recovered patients testing positive once more for the virus has sparked fears of a fresh outbreak.
“We say that a patient has fully recovered when he or she tests negative twice within 24 hours. But the fact that some of them tested positive again in a short period means that the virus remains longer than we thought,” Son Young- rae, a spokesman for the health and welfare ministry, told the Financial Times.