https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/worl...ople-cannot-get-coronavirus-twice/ar-BB13tm64
Scientists conclude people cannot get coronavirus twice
A number of reported cases of coronavirus patients relapsing after overcoming the disease were actually due to testing failures, South Korean scientists say.
Researchers at the South Korean centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) now say it is impossible for the
COVID-19 virus to reactivate in human bodies.
There have been more than 10,000 confirmed
coronavirus cases in South Korea, with 245 deaths - a 2.3% fatality rate, which is lower than the 3.4% average as stated by the World Health Organisation.
A total of 277 patients in the country were believed to have fallen ill for a second time, as had patients in China and Japan.
This prompted concerns that the virus could be mutating so quickly that people were not necessarily immune to catching it again.
However, genetic analyses of the virus have not found any substantial changes which would effectively disguise it from the immune system.
Partially as a result of these reports, the World Health Organisation warned governments against
using so-called "immunity passports" to allow people to return to work simply because they have antibodies for the virus.
Immunity passports are a proposed way of allowing countries to begin to lift their coronavirus lockdowns in a targeted manner and resume economic activity.
They would be issued to people who have already overcome a COVID-19 infection and test positive for antibodies to the virus, based on the assumption they are therefore immune.
In an update to its guidance, the WHO warned there was "no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection".
But it was not expected that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test used to check the blood for antigens - actual particles of the virus itself - could also have issues.
South Korea's CDC has found that the test results for the suspected relapsed patients were false positives, and warned the test it used was not able to distinguish between live traces of the virus and the harmless dead samples which remain after patients have recovered.