Health authorities in Seoul, South Korea had on Friday announced that 91 people who fully recovered from the novel coronavirus have now tested positive for COVID-19 again.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said they tested positive for the new coronavirus again after they were released from quarantine.
KCDC Director-General Jeong Eun-kyeong said a viral test on such cases was under way, with the results expected after two weeks, unlike regular swab tests used to test for COVID-19 that shows results in a relatively shorter time.
Jeong told reporters that;
We are isolating viral cells from respiratory organs of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 again.
The KCDC said it was also looking into whether those who retested positive had an antibody that would indicate whether they had recovered, as some health experts said immune people with the antibody were not contagious.
Health authorities in Seoul said that the virus was highly likely to have been reactivated, instead of the people being reinfected, as they tested positive again in a relatively short time after being released from quarantine.
Other virologists and epidemiologists also said the positive results from the retesting might have come from the virus reactivating and not from wrong diagnoses.
They also said that the COVID-19 virus could remain latent in certain cells in the body and attack the respiratory organs again once reactivated in a COVID-19 patient who is deemed fully recovered. Such patient shows negative results for two tests in a row, performed within a 24-hour interval.
According to the KCDC, the country’s COVID-19 infections on Friday fell below 30 cases for the first time since it’s first case in February.
That total number of confirmed cases in the nation is now a total of 10,450 with 27 new cases detected on Thursday.
