HK finds first case of human reinfection
Print Edition
A HONG Kong man who recovered from COVID-19 was infected again four and a half months later in the first documented instance of human reinfection, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said yesterday.
The findings indicate the disease, which has killed more than 800,000 people worldwide, may continue to spread amongst the global population despite herd immunity, they said.
The 33-year-old male was cleared of COVID-19 and discharged from a hospital in April, but tested positive again after returning from Spain via Britain on August 15.
The patient had appeared to be previously healthy, researchers said in the paper, which was accepted by the international medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
He was found to have contracted a different coronavirus strain from the one he had previously contracted and remained asymptomatic for the second infection.
“Our study proves that immunity for COVID infection is not lifelong — in fact, reinfection can occur quite quickly,” said Kelvin Kai-Wang To, a microbiologist at University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine and one of the leading authors of the paper.
“COVID-19 patients should not assume after they recover that they won’t get infected again,” he said.
Broadcasters said yesterday a patient in the Netherlands and another in Belgium had also been reinfected with the virus.
Dutch broadcaster NOS cited virologist Marion Koopmans as saying the patient in the Netherlands was an older person with a weakened immune system.
Koopmans, an adviser to the Dutch government, said reinfections had been expected. “That someone would pop up with a reinfection doesn’t make me nervous,” she said. “We have to see whether it happens often.”
Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told Belgian broadcaster VRT he had not been surprised by the Hong Kong reinfection.
“For us it was not news because we have also had such a case in Belgium,” he told the Terzake program. The Belgian case was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 for the first time in the second week of March and for a second time in June.
Experts differed as to how alarmed the world should be by the new findings.
“This is a worrying finding for two reasons,” said David Strain, a clinical senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School.
“It suggests that previous infections are not protective. It also raises the possibility that vaccinations may not provide the hope that we have been waiting for.”
If antibodies don’t provide lasting protection, “we will need to revert to a strategy of viral near-elimination in order to return to a normal life,” he added.
In the same vein, To said that scientists developing vaccines should look not just at the immune response, but at the duration of protection from infection.
But it does not mean taking vaccines will be useless. “Immunity induced by vaccination can be different from those induced by natural infection,” To said. “Will need to wait for the results of the vaccine trials to see how effective vaccines are.”
Hong Kong will ease some coronavirus measures from Friday, allowing venues like cinemas and beauty parlors to reopen and restaurants to extend dining hours, authorities said yesterday.
Hong Kong had seen a resurgence of locally transmitted cases since the start of July but the daily number has fallen from triple digits in recent weeks to low double digits. Monday’s infection count of nine new cases was the lowest in nearly two months.
Health Secretary Sophia Chan said that the government would allow outdoor sports centers to reopen and would lift mandatory mask wearing for outdoor sports and country parks. Restaurants would extend dining to 9pm, having previously only been able to offer takeaways past 6pm.
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