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People recovering from COVID-19 should not assume that they automatically have three months of immunity to reinfection, the CDC warned, after misleading reports suggested those recovering from coronavirus would naturally be resistant to catch it again. The warning follows misinterpreted guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on when the new COVID-19 test should be performed.
Trying to determine whether people can catch the coronavirus again after being infected and recovered is a key area for scientists and policymakers. After all, if there is a period when those who have had COVID-19 are immune to the virus, knowing – and how long it could last – could be instrumental in getting people back to work safely, at school and in public life in general.
An update earlier this month to the CDC’s isolation guidelines seemed to imply, for some readers, that an answer had been worked out. The health agency suggested that people who had shown an initial infection could continue to test positive for up to three months after that first diagnosis, but not in fact be infectious to others. This has led, according to the CDC, to assumptions about immunity.
Assumptions, it is clear, which are not supported by real science. In fact, the CDC said in a statement, “This science does not imply that a person is immune to reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, within 3 months of ‘infection. The latest data simply suggests that there is no need to retest a person within 3 months of the initial infection, unless that person has symptoms of COVID-19 and the symptoms cannot be associated with an illness. other disease.
The reality is that we still don’t know if immunity is automatically deducted after recovery from coronavirus. “There are no confirmed reports to date of a person re-infected with COVID-19 within 3 months of the initial infection,” said the CDC. If people are immune, it is not known whether this can be permanent, strain-dependent, or temporary. In the latter case, it is also uncertain how long this temporary immunity could last.
“There have been more than 15 recently published international and US studies examining the duration of infection, duration of viral shedding, asymptomatic spread, and risk of spread among various patient groups,” the CDC explains. “Researchers have found that the amount of virus living in the nose and throat drops dramatically soon after symptoms of COVID-19 develop. In addition, the duration of infection in most people with COVID-19 does not exceed 10 days after the onset of symptoms and does not exceed 20 days in people who are critically ill or severely immunocompromised. ”
In May, the CDC raised red flags over immunity hypotheses even after serologic testing for coronavirus antibodies. The false positives, the agency warned, were likely “in most countries,” including even “areas that have been heavily affected” by COVID-19, as accuracy depends on more numbers of people. infections in a population.
For now, the official CDC isolation guidelines are still valid. Those with COVID-19 should be isolated for “at least 10 days” after the onset of their symptoms, the agency advises, and for 24 hours after their fever is gone, without the use of drugs that reduce the fever. Meanwhile, new research indicates that it is the order of symptom onset that is particularly distinct from the coronavirus, helping to differentiate it from other infections like the flu and SARS.
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