Dead virus fragments are causing COVID-19 reinfection false positives - News Medical | - Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo:
May 4, 2020 - "The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has ravaged across the globe.... One of the most significant concerns in this global pandemic is the possibility of reinfection as previous reports in South Korea and Japan show people testing positive with the coronavirus again.
"Now, a team of South Korean researchers has revealed that reports of recovered coronavirus patients testing positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection a second time round are due to testing errors and not actually reinfection.
"The country’s infectious disease experts said that dead-virus fragments were most likely cause [of] positive results for SARS-CoV-2 infection among 260 people who have recovered from the disease. The tests even showed the presence of these fragments even weeks after making full recoveries.
"Oh Myoung-don, who spearheads the central clinical committee for emerging disease control in South Korea, said there was little reason to believe the cases had emerged from reactivation of the virus or reinfection. 'The tests detected the ribonucleic acid of the dead virus,' Dr. Oh, who is also a hospital doctor at the Seoul National University, explained.
"The conventional test used to detect SARS-CoV-2 is the polymerase chain reaction test or PCR test. However, there are technical limitations to the test. It cannot distinguish whether the virus in the patient is alive or dead.... 'The respiratory epithelial cell has a half-life of up to three months, and RNA virus in the cell can be detected with PCR testing one to two months after the elimination of the cell,' Dr. Oh explained.
"So far, there were more than 260 people who tested positive again in South Korea. These patients have recovered and were declared virus-free.
"The new report confirmed a previous assessment of the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that patients who tested positive again had little or no contagiousness at all. This means that they cannot transmit the virus to others, based on virus culture cells that all failed to find live viruses in recovered patients.
"The reports of reinfection in the country ... sparked panic, as South Korea has already flattened the curve after extensive mass testing and isolation of cases. It is one of the countries that have controlled the spread of the virus without resorting to restrictions and lockdowns."
Read more: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200504/Dead-virus-fragments-are-causing-COVID-19-reinfection-false-positives.aspx
May 4, 2020 - "The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has ravaged across the globe.... One of the most significant concerns in this global pandemic is the possibility of reinfection as previous reports in South Korea and Japan show people testing positive with the coronavirus again.
"Now, a team of South Korean researchers has revealed that reports of recovered coronavirus patients testing positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection a second time round are due to testing errors and not actually reinfection.
"The country’s infectious disease experts said that dead-virus fragments were most likely cause [of] positive results for SARS-CoV-2 infection among 260 people who have recovered from the disease. The tests even showed the presence of these fragments even weeks after making full recoveries.
"Oh Myoung-don, who spearheads the central clinical committee for emerging disease control in South Korea, said there was little reason to believe the cases had emerged from reactivation of the virus or reinfection. 'The tests detected the ribonucleic acid of the dead virus,' Dr. Oh, who is also a hospital doctor at the Seoul National University, explained.
"The conventional test used to detect SARS-CoV-2 is the polymerase chain reaction test or PCR test. However, there are technical limitations to the test. It cannot distinguish whether the virus in the patient is alive or dead.... 'The respiratory epithelial cell has a half-life of up to three months, and RNA virus in the cell can be detected with PCR testing one to two months after the elimination of the cell,' Dr. Oh explained.
"So far, there were more than 260 people who tested positive again in South Korea. These patients have recovered and were declared virus-free.
"The new report confirmed a previous assessment of the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that patients who tested positive again had little or no contagiousness at all. This means that they cannot transmit the virus to others, based on virus culture cells that all failed to find live viruses in recovered patients.
"The reports of reinfection in the country ... sparked panic, as South Korea has already flattened the curve after extensive mass testing and isolation of cases. It is one of the countries that have controlled the spread of the virus without resorting to restrictions and lockdowns."
Read more: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200504/Dead-virus-fragments-are-causing-COVID-19-reinfection-false-positives.aspx
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