Summary It comes as officials in China fear second wave of cases from people returning from other countries
(Web Desk) – UP to 14 per cent of patients who have recovered from coronavirus in China tested positive again, it s reported.
Research suggests that between three and 14 per cent of those who had initially received a positive diagnosis became reinfected.
It comes as officials in China fear a second wave of cases from people returning from other countries as lockdown measures were lifted.
New research from doctors on the frontline of the outbreak in Wuhan - where the virus originated - reported that between three and 10 per cent of cured patients tested positive again.
Tongji Hospital, which identified the first Covid-19 case, confirmed that five out of 145 patients — a little over three per cent — tested positive again in nucleic acid tests, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Wang Wei, the hospital’s president, said: “So far there is no evidence to suggest that they are infectious."
He added that the five patients who had tested positive again did not have any symptoms and none of their close contacts had been infected.
Mr Wang added that surveillance of similar patients showed that 80 to 90 per cent had no trace of the virus in their system one month after being discharged from the hospital, according to the report.
But, he said, these are just “small samples” and “not enough to assure us of the validity of our initial findings”.
“We need a large-scale epidemiological study to guide our disease surveillance and prevention works,” Mr Wang said.
Meanwhile, other quarantine facilities in Wuhan have seen about 5 to 10 percent of their recovered patients test positive again.
The findings were reported by the health news outlet Life Times, which is affiliated with state-run newspaper People’s Daily.
