American scientists have announced the first confirmed case of a COVID-19 reinfection in the US, according to their study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed after being submitted to the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The study, which was also published as a preprint on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), is related to a 25-year-old man living in Reno, Nevada, who first tested positive for the coronavirus in mid-April after he had a sore throat, cough, headache, nausea, and diarrhoea.
He then recovered, but tested positive for COVID-19 once again in late May and developed more severe symptoms this time, the study said. The man’s blood oxygen levels plummeted and he was rushed to a hospital, where he received oxygen support.
"It is important to note, that this is a singular finding. It does not provide any information to us with regard to the generalizability of this phenomenon”, study co-author Mark Pandori, who is also the director of the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, said in a statement on Friday.
He explained that after a patient recovers from the COVID-19, researchers have no idea about “how much immunity is built up, how long it may last, or how well antibodies play a role in protection against a reinfection”.
"If reinfection is possible on such a short timeline, there may be implications for the efficacy of vaccines developed to fight the disease. It may also have implications for herd immunity", Pandori pointed out.
The US has been hit the hardest by the coronavirus outbreak, with 5.9 million registered cases and 181,779 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University's latest estimates.