51 patients test corona positive again after getting cured!

April 10: Around 51 patients categorised as having been cured of COVID-19 in South Korea again tested positive, Bloomberg reported citing a CDC briefing. As opposed to them being infected again, the virus may have been reactivated in these individuals, given how they are testing positive again post being discharged from quarantine, Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director-general of the Korean CDC said.

Concerns over re-infection in cured patients is also mounting in China, where the virus first surfaced in December last year, after reports stated that a few had tested positive and even passed away after purportedly recovering and being released from the hospital. There’s not much understanding about why the resurgence of the disease in such individuals was seen, but some believe that the issue rests in the discrepancies in test results.

An individual is considered to have recovered completely when two tests, conducted with an interval of 24 hours, come out as negative. The Korean CDC will conduct an epidemiological probe into the cases, Jeong said.

Epidemiologists around the world are in a race to find out more about the virus that causes Covid-19. The pathogen’s rapid global spread has recently seen the focus shift to patients who contract the virus but display few or atypical symptoms.