Report says, Up to 14% of patients who have recovered from coronavirus in China have tested positive again after being discharged from the hospital.
The South China Morning Post reported that doctors at a hospital in Wuhan, China, where the virus emerged disclosed that between 14% of cured patients became reinfected with the illness, adding that, it’s unclear whether they were contagious the second time.
Experts have cried out that China is facing a second outbreak due to the increasing number of imported cases as well as the 'silent carriers' who show no symptoms.
Tongji Hospital, that identified the first COVID-19 case, said that five of 145 patients, a little over 3% tested positive again in nucleic acid tests, the state broadcaster CCTV reports.
The hospital’s president, Wang Wei said five patients who tested positive again did not have any symptoms and none of their close contacts had been infected.
He added that "surveillance of similar patients showed that 80 to 90% had no trace of the virus in their system one month after being discharged from the hospital".
While he later 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.”
It would be recalled that Coronavirus started in Wuhan, China and has affected over 200 countries, with 200,000 deaths