Can You Catch Coronavirus All Over Again?
Can you catch coronavirus twice?
Despite reports about possible reinfection cases, there’s actually no strong evidence supporting the notion that people can test positive again within a short time period. “I haven’t heard of a case where it’s been truly unambiguously demonstrated,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine seems to have the same opinion. “I’m not saying it can’t happen. But from what I’ve seen so far, that would be an uncommon phenomenon.”
Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and associate chief of infectious diseases at the University of California-San Francisco, also added that “no one is yet believing in reinfection since there is no good scientific report on it.”
One theory behind the reinfection cases is that the patients had dead virus particles that remained in their bodies and caused the false-positive results. Furthermore, a study carried out by South Korea’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that none of the patients who tested positive the second time transmitted the virus to other people.
Bottom line: More research is necessary but for the moment, “no one wants to dismiss the possibility” of catching coronavirus all over again, Gandhi said. It might be unlikely but not impossible.
