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This article is republished here with permission from The Associated Press. This content is shared here as the topic may be of interest to Snopes readers; however, it does not represent the work of the fact-checkers or editors of Snopes.
If i have had the coronavirus before, can i get it again?
It is possible, but such cases seem rare. It is increasingly clear that people whose bodies have built up a strong defense against the virus are unlikely to test positive again for at least several months, if not longer.
It is not unusual to develop immunity to a virus after infection, as our bodies are generally better at recognizing and fighting off bugs that they have encountered before. And that appears to be the case with the coronavirus as well, although scientists are still trying to determine how long protection could last.
Some re-infections have been confirmed, but two new studies suggest this is highly unusual.
In one case, only two of the 1,265 health workers in the UK who had previously been infected ended up testing positive for the coronavirus again within six months. In another study of people in the United States, only 0.3% of those infected tested positive for the virus in the next few months – about the same rate of positivity as the British study.
The results bode well for the COVID-19 vaccines being deployed, which trigger the kind of immune responses studies have found to be protective.
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