When it comes to illnesses, in some cases when you catch a virus, your body then builds up the immunity to it, meaning that you catching it the second time is relatively low. However, it doesn’t necessarily seem to be that way with the coronavirus, where it has been revealed that a 25-year old man from Nevada actually managed to catch the coronavirus twice.
In a case study published in The Lancet, it was reported that the man had initially contracted the virus in April and suffered from symptoms like cough and nausea. He eventually made a recovery and tested negative in May, where it was suggested that he was in the clear. However, by the end of May, it seems that he caught the virus again and this time round, it was much more serious and ended up in an urgent care center.
This re-infection would make him the fifth person in the world to do so, and the second person in the world where the re-infection was actually worse than the first. This has led some to question the efficacy of a vaccine, especially if it seems that it is possible for people to not only get re-infected, but end up being worse than the first time round.
However, there is still a lot about the virus’ nature that we do not know about yet. Some scientists have speculated that it is possible that the reason the second round of symptoms was worse was because of exposure to higher levels of the virus. Alternatively, it has been suggested that maybe the body’s immune response could actually have made it worse rather than better.
Filed in . Read more about Coronavirus, Covid-19, Health and Science. Source: npr.org