South Korea says patients who re-tested positive after recovering were no longer infectious

‘Survivors of Covid-19 who re-tested positive for the disease after making a full recovery were no longer infectious or a risk to their loved ones, South Korea's health agency announced Monday, adding a new clue to the ongoing mysteries surrounding Covid-19 immunity.’

Read here (Forbes, May 18, 2020)

Why are some people testing positive more than once?

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organisation (WHO) says some people are testing positive more than once for coronavirus - but it doesn't mean they have been reinfected.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, she said doctors were finding instances where "dead cells" that emerged during the healing process of the lungs were testing positive for Covid-19, but the individuals themselves were not reinfected.

View here (BBC, May 3, 2020)

Tests in recovered patients found false positives, not reinfections, experts say

‘South Korea’s infectious disease experts said Thursday that dead virus fragments were the likely cause of over 260 people here testing positive again for the novel coronavirus days and even weeks after marking full recoveries.

‘Oh Myoung-don, who leads the central clinical committee for emerging disease control, said the committee members found little reason to believe that those cases could be COVID-19 reinfections or reactivations, which would have made global efforts to contain the virus much more daunting. “The tests detected the ribonucleic acid of the dead virus,” said Oh, a Seoul National University hospital doctor, at a press conference Thursday held at the National Medical Center.’

Read here (The Korea Herald, April 29, 2020)

WHO and ”immunity passports”: No clear evidence people who have recovered cannot be reinfected

‘Some governments have suggested that the detection of antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could serve as the basis for an “immunity passport” or “risk-free certificate” that would enable individuals to travel or to return to work assuming that they are protected against re-infection. There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.’

Read here (WHO, April 24, 2020)