Jahnavi Sarma
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Written By: Jahnavi Sarma | Updated : April 17, 2020 10:11 PM IST
It is quite possible that recovered patients of COVID-19 test positive because of leftover virus in the body.
There are a lot of 'unknowns' about the virus that causes COVID-19. This new strain of coronavirus continues to puzzle scientists across the world. There is no data that they can fall back on and this is coming in their way of developing a cure and a fool-proof test for this contagion. Now, recently reports from China, Japan, and South Korea indicate that many cured and discharged people have again tested positive for the virus. This brings with it the question of whether you may get the virus again after undergoing treatment and being cured.
Scientists say that the human body produces antibodies about a week after infection from any pathogen. This, they say, provide immunity to a person for a certain period of time, which can be anything from 6 months to a year.
But with the COVID-19 infection, they are not very clear about this process though research is currently going on regarding this matter. But it will be a long time before any concrete answer comes to us from these researches. It can only be done over a long period of time if we want to know if people who recover from COVID-19 are immune or how long the immunity lasts. But almost all experts agree that, based on past records, the antibodies that our body will produce after COVID-19 infection will offer a certain amount of immunity. But they also caution that this immunity will depend to a great extent on your body's natural immune response.
There are many reports today that people who have recovered from this deadly contagion have again tested positive for the virus. Some people also exhibit mild symptoms after full recovery and test positive. But the surprising this is that even after testing positive after recovery, they do not infect others. This is what reports from China say.
Though experts say that more research is needed before one can arrive at any conclusion, it is quite possible that these recovered patients test positive because of leftover virus in the body. But this does not explain why they tested negative at the time of discharge. Some say this may be because of the many false-negative results that tests show.
A recent peer-reviewed study at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, say that 12 patients developed antibodies after COVID-19 infection. Researchers say that any infection will create immunity in most or all individuals for almost a year. They also reiterate that widespread infection of increasing numbers of people in any population will lead to herd immunity. As more people become immune to a particular virus, an infected individual has less chance of coming into contact with a person susceptible to infection. In this scenario, new infection rates will go down eventually.
But experts warn that mild illness may not always build up protection by way of antibodies. It is therefore important to study the immune responses of asymptomatic people with COVID-19 infection to determine whether symptoms, and their severity, predict whether a person becomes immune.
