Two European patients are confirmed to have been re-infected with COVID-19, raising concerns about people’s immunity to the coronavirus as the world struggles to tame the pandemic.
The cases, in Belgium and Netherlands, follow a report this week by researchers in Hong Kong about a man there who had contracted a different strain of the virus four and half months after being declared recovered – the first such second infection to be documented.
Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst said the Belgium case was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 for the first time in March and then again with a different coronavirus strain in June. Further cases of re-infection were likely to surface, he said.
Viruses mutate and that means that a potential vaccine is not going to be a vaccine that will last forever, for 10 years, probably not even five years. just as for flu, this will have to be redesigned quite regularly.
We would have loved the virus to be more stable than it is, but you can’t force mature.
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