Worries over coronavirus reinfection
In a case that has raised fears the pandemic may last longer than previously predicted, an otherwise healthy Nevada man has become the first American confirmed to have caught the coronavirus twice—with the second infection markedly worse than the first. During his first bout with the virus in March and April, the 25-year-old suffered a sore throat, cough, headache, and diarrhea but was able to recover in isolation at home. But when the unnamed man caught a genetically distinct variant of the virus in late May, his symptoms were so bad that he had to be admitted to a hospital and treated with supplemental oxygen. A handful of reinfections have been reported in other countries, but in nearly all those cases the patients experienced milder symptoms or none at all, presumably because their immune system had learned how to fight the virus. The Nevada man has since recovered, but if his case isn’t a one-off, it would mean Covid-19 survivors can’t count on being protected against the coronavirus and that vaccines—which are more likely to produce robust immunity than a natural infection—will be essential to achieve mass population immunity. However, scientists note that of the more than 38 million people worldwide who have so far been infected with the coronavirus, only five have been confirmed to have been reinfected. “That’s tiny,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, tells The New York Times. “It’s like a microliter-sized drop in the bucket.”