On Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said that almost three cases of COVID-19 re-infection have been reported across the country till now, while 24 such cases arereported globally. ICMR director general Balram Bhargava said that three cases of re-infection of COVID-19 has been brought to the notice of ICMR that includes two cases in Mumbai and one case in Ahmedabad. In the meantime, the ‘Lancet Infectious Diseases’ journal said that a patient with confirmed re-infection with the coronavirus infection in the US has shown more severe symptoms in the second infection as compared to the first infection.

This assumes the significance of the re-infection COVID-19 cases, which indicates that there is no guarantee that a person infected with coronavirus infection once develops immunity for life-long. Also, many experts assume that the re-infection might be mild but the Lancet report has shown that this might not always be the case.

Bhargava further said the criteria to detect a re-infection case is approximately between 90 and 100 days. WHO has still not decided the number of days so they are taking a cut-off of about 100 days.

Re-infection cases COVID-19are cases where people contract the coronavirus for the second time after being recovered. The first case of coronavirus re-infection was reported in Hong Kong as a 33-year-old man who was firstly infected in March, had recovered and got re-infected in more than four months after taking a trip abroad.

Source: ET Healthworld