A 25-year-old man in Nevada tested positive for coronavirus twice, once in mid-April and the second in early June, according to a new report published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The patient is the first known person in North America to suffer asymptomatic reinfection of COVID-19. In other words, this is the first confirmed case in the US in which a person tested positive for the coronavirus, the symptoms disappeared, and then they developed symptoms and tested positive a second time.
The patient featured in the new report first tested positive for COVID-19 on April 18. He did not have any underlying conditions or any health problems that caused a weakened immune system. But he had been experiencing symptoms often caused by the coronavirus, namely a sore throat, headache, cough, diarrhea, and nausea, so he went for a test at a community testing event in Washoe County, Nevada. , where the patient lives. He tested positive for the coronavirus and was isolated. While in quarantine, the patient’s symptoms disappeared.
He was in good health for about a month before falling ill again on May 28, when he began to suffer from many of the same symptoms that he had experienced during his first COVID-19 test. Specifically, nausea, cough, headache, and diarrhea returned. She also felt dizzy this time and had a self-reported fever.
These symptoms prompted the patient to seek help at an urgent care clinic. A chest X-ray was performed and the patient was allowed to return home. However, the patient returned to seek help five days later from a primary care physician. There, doctors noted that he had shortness of breath and hypoxia or low oxygen levels. After his primary care doctor gave him oxygen, they told him to go straight to the emergency room. The report’s authors wrote that the patient’s second COVID-19 infection caused more severe symptoms than the first.
While this is the first documented case of a patient in North America suffering from symptomatic COVID-19 at two different times, similar observations have been made in Ecuador, Hong Kong, Belgium, and the Netherlands, according to the Lancet report. Infectious Diseases.
So does this mean that people who have had the coronavirus and recovered are definitely at risk of getting it again? At this time, the answer is unclear. The report’s authors acknowledged that scientists do not fully understand how, or if, immunity to COVID-19 develops in some people after their first COVID-19 infection.
Information in this story is accurate as of press time. However, as the situation surrounding COVID-19 continues to evolve, some data may have changed since its publication. While Health tries to keep our stories as up-to-date as possible, we also encourage readers to stay informed on news and recommendations for their own communities by using the CDC, WHO, and your local department of public health as resources.
