'No Evidence' That Recovered COVID-19 Patients Are Immune, WHO Says

[Mike 03]

NPR
April 25 2020

Excerpt:

But these ideas depend to a large degree on the supposition that one cannot catch the coronavirus a second time — an idea that world health authorities said leaders should not count on right now. As of Friday, the WHO said, "No study has evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this virus in humans."

What's more, data reported from the world's early COVID-19 hot spots, such as South Korea and China, have shown that a growing number of recovered patients appear to have suffered a relapse of the disease.

By mid-April, Korean health authorities said that just over 2% of the country's recovered patients were in isolation again after testing positive a second time. And in Wuhan, China, data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for observation after their discharge from hospitals, show that about 5% to 10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.

It remains unclear why this is occurring — whether it is a sign of a second infection, a reactivation of the remaining virus in the body or the result of an inaccurate antibody test.

Dozens of antibody tests for the novel coronavirus are already on the market, with varying degrees of reliability and accuracy. House Democrats have launched an investigation into the antibody tests and whether the Food and Drug Administration should increase its enforcement of them, according to CNN.

"At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport' or 'risk-free certificate,' " the WHO warned.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says

I really hope this turns out not to be the case; however, the article contains some new statistics that paint a bleaker picture of this situation.

[BGBD]

1. Also

No evidence that they arent immune.

Testing positive again is a much different situation than being reinforced. it can have multiple causes such as false positives (or false negaitves), environmental contamination, human error, inactive viral shedding, etc.

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Perhaps They Could Quit Publishing...

...until they have firm conclusions based upon broad scale data.
This is useless information added into an already high anxiety situation.

[FreeState]

5. I don't believe it's useless

We have governments and pro-open up people banking on testing for anti-bodies and hoping for herd immunity in order to day it’s safe to return back to normalcy. Policy should be decided on science not the absence of it.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. This Is Science?

Different than what I practiced in my career.
This is not vetted or reviewed, the conclusions are murky, and there's no substantiation by an independent group.
They may be taking a scientific approach, but publishing not yet provable hypotheses is bad science.
And sociology is also a science.
Publishing things that make things seem hopeless is irresponsible and likely to lead to many saying "What the heck, might as well go on to regular life."
You're concerned about people rushing to reopen and rightfully so. You don't believe that telling people the virus is never going away has a profound sociological effect?

[rampartc]

3. still early

perhaps it means that immunity is limited in duration or that there are variances among persons and viruses.

but i wouldn't be greatly optimistic about a vaccine or "herd immunity" until we get a lot more data.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. "It remains unclear"...

It remains unclear why this is occurring — whether it is a sign of a second infection, a reactivation of the remaining virus in the body or the result of an inaccurate antibody test.

Critical information not included :

How soon are these “reinfections/relapses” occurring after patient has tested positive for antibodies?

With most vaccines, it usually takes 2-4 weeks after injection to develop effective immunity.

So many unanswered questions mean all these “unclear” reports should be taken with several grains of salt...

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. K&R