According to reports, patients who had been discharged after testing negative have tested positive again for the deadly coronavirus in South Korea.
The Sun reports that 116 people who were initially cleared of the infection have tested positive for coronavirus days later.
The strange development is now under investigation by the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) and the World Health Organization.
They are of the assumption that the disease probably re-activated rather than the patients being re-infected.
Other experts said faulty tests may be playing a role, or remnants of the virus may still be in patients’ systems but not be infectious or of danger to the host or others.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said: “While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this.
“There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another.”
Read also: COVID-19: Gov. Zulum Distributes Food, Cash to 11,000 IDPs
According to WHO guidelines, before being discharged from the hospital, a clinically recovered Covid-19 patient should test negative for the virus twice, with tests carried out at least 24 hours apart.
The trend has also been reported in China: people who have gotten the virus, recovered, tested negative and then tested positive again.
Leave a Reply