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A new report from the South China Morning Post suggests that as many as 10% of COVID-19 patients in China tested positive again after they were discharged from the hospital.
What’s going on:
- According to the report, doctors suggested that anywhere between 3% and 10% of patients became reinfected with the coronavirus.
- There was no data about whether the patients were contagious the second time.
- Tongji Hospital — where the first case of COVID-19 was announced — told CCTV that five of 145 patients (about 3%) tested positive again.
- These five patients “did not have any symptoms and none of their close contacts had been infected,” according to Fox News.
- Wang Wei, the president of Tongji Hospital, reportedly said 80% to 90% of patients had no trace of the virus in their symptom after one month from leaving the office, Fox News reports. Those are small samples, though. More research is needed to draw a firm conclusion, he said.
Meanwhile, in Wuhan ...
- According to NPR, some residents of the city of Wuhan, China — where the virus broke out last fall — “who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time.”
- Some of the retested positive patients include asymptomatic carries, or “those who carry the virus and are possibly infectious but do not exhibit any of the illness’ associated symptoms,” according to NPR.
- This could mean the virus is due for another run in Wuhan.