World’s 'first' coronavirus reinfection case confirmed in Hong Kong

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) said that they had confirmed the world's "first case" of coronavirus reinfection after a 33-year-old man got the infection once again after over four months.

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The man's two viral signatures were "completely different", and belonged to different coronavirus lineages, according to researchers after he suffered a relapse. The researchers found that first strain resembled those that were collected in March and April, however, the second strain matched the virus found in Europe after the person visited the continent in July and August.

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The man had travalled to Spain and had returned to Hong Kong via London after he was detected with the virus during screening at the airport. The man's PCR swab test was positive.

"Our study proves that immunity for COVID infection is not lifelong, in fact, reinfection can occur quite quickly," Kelvin Kai-Wang To, microbiologist and lead author of the study, said.

Although there have been cases reported of reinfections, however, this is the first time it has been proven after tests. “This is the world’s first documentation of a patient who recovered from COVID-19 but got another episode of COVID-19 afterwards,” the researchers said in a statement.

However, the World Health Organization(WHO) said it needs to look at the case at the "at a population level” as there have been "24 million cases reported to date".

"The finding does not mean taking vaccines will be useless," Dr. Kai-Wang To said, adding,"immunity induced by vaccination can be different from those induced by natural infection," To said. "[We] will need to wait for the results of the vaccine trials to see if how effective vaccines are."

Worrying news emerged from Belgium and Netherlands on Tuesday as Dutch media reported re-infections of coronavirus. A patient in the Netherlands and another in Belgium got infected after making recovery from Covid-19 infection the first time around. The development on Tuesday follows reports of the first known re-infection of coronavirus in Hong Kong. This has been confirmed by scientists.

Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that the re-infected patient in the Netherlands was an old person with a weakened immune system.

Virologist Marion Koopmans, cited by the NOS, said that it was common for people to remain infected with the virus for a long time with mild symptoms. The infection flares up in some cases. Marion Koopmans said that genetic testing was required in both instances of infection to check whether there were any differences in the virus present.