Mystery In Wuhan: Recovered Coronavirus Patients Test Negative ... Then Positive
(NPR)
A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 [testing] even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.
[Two different things there.]
...
...about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.
Some of those who retested positive appear to be asymptomatic carriers — those who carry the virus and are possibly infectious but do not exhibit any of the illness's associated symptoms — suggesting that the outbreak in Wuhan is not close to being over.
NPR has spoken by phone or exchanged text messages with four individuals in Wuhan who are part of this group of individuals testing positive a second time in March. All four said they had been sickened with the virus and tested positive, then were released from medical care in recent weeks after their condition improved and they tested negative.
Two of them are front-line doctors who were sickened after treating patients in their Wuhan hospitals. The other two are Wuhan residents.
...
Could that second positive test mean a second round of infection? Virologists think it is unlikely that a COVID-19 patient could be re-infected so quickly after recovery but caution that it is too soon to know.
...
In February, Wang Chen, a director at the state-run Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, estimated that the nucleic acid tests used in China were accurate at identifying positive cases of the coronavirus only 30%-50% of the time.
(NPR)
A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 [testing] even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.
[Two different things there.]
...
...about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.
Some of those who retested positive appear to be asymptomatic carriers — those who carry the virus and are possibly infectious but do not exhibit any of the illness's associated symptoms — suggesting that the outbreak in Wuhan is not close to being over.
NPR has spoken by phone or exchanged text messages with four individuals in Wuhan who are part of this group of individuals testing positive a second time in March. All four said they had been sickened with the virus and tested positive, then were released from medical care in recent weeks after their condition improved and they tested negative.
Two of them are front-line doctors who were sickened after treating patients in their Wuhan hospitals. The other two are Wuhan residents.
...
Could that second positive test mean a second round of infection? Virologists think it is unlikely that a COVID-19 patient could be re-infected so quickly after recovery but caution that it is too soon to know.
...
In February, Wang Chen, a director at the state-run Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, estimated that the nucleic acid tests used in China were accurate at identifying positive cases of the coronavirus only 30%-50% of the time.
