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COVID-19 reinfection: 90% of recovered patients suffer lung damage, 5% test positive again

COVID-19 reinfection: 90% of recovered patients suffer lung damage, 5% test positive again
Virafin makes COVID-19 treatment 'less cumbersome and more affordable, Zydus Cadila said.

Can COVID-19 recovered patients catch the virus again? The chances are high with many reports of people falling sick again after recovery. Here is another report hinting at this possibility.

Written by Longjam Dineshwori |Updated : August 7, 2020 9:13 AM IST

An increasing number of people are getting infected with the highly contagious COVID-19 disease, but the recovery rate is also rising across the globe. In India, over 13 lakh people have recovered from the disease. But the question is whether these recovered patients have become immune to the disease. It is still unclear as there have been many reports of people falling sick again after recovery.

A report from China now revealed that 90 per cent of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in Wuhan city are suffering from lung damage and five per cent of them tested positive for the virus again PTI reported.

Peng Zhiyong, Director, Intensive Care Unit - Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, and his team have been following 100 recovered patients since April. The average age of the patients included in the study is 59. When they completed the first phase of its one-year programme in July, the team found that lungs of 90 per cent of the patients are still in a damaged state. The study results were first reported by Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper.

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No antibodies found in 10 per cent of recovered patients

Peng's team also found no antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients. Five per cent of them have to be quarantined again as they showed positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, the report said.

IgM is the antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. Presence of IgM in the blood indicates that a person has been infected by the virus. However, the doctors are still unclear if the recovered patients were infected again.

All the patients also had a low level of B cells, a primary force for killing viruses in the human body, but a high level of T cells, which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells. This means that their immune systems are yet to be fully recovered.

In a walking test, the recovered patients were able to only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period. Even after they were discharged from the hospital, some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines for three months, the report. The patients also reported suffering from depression and a sense of stigma.

Can you catch the virus again?

Reports of possible coronavirus reinfection have sparked doubts among people about whether humans can become immune to the virus. A study recently published in the journal Nature found that antibodies in asymptomatic COVID-19 patients declined within 2-3 months. In the study, the researchers followed 37 asymptomatic and 37 symptomatic people for eight weeks after they were discharged from the hospital. They found that IgG levels dropped in about 93 percent asymptomatic COVID-19 patients and about 96.8 percent symptomatic people in the early convalescent (recovery) phase.

Further, they saw a decline in neutralising antibodies the antibodies that bind to the virus and stop the infection in 81 percent of asymptomatic patients and 62 percent of the symptomatic patients.

Another small study on coronaviruses that cause the common cold found a significant reduction (about 50 percent) in antibody levels among the recovered patients within six months and reinfection within a year.

Since SARS-CoV-2 is also a member of the coronavirus family and shares many characteristics, the researchers hinted at the possibility of COVID-19 reinfection.