As soon as the coronavirus infection is over, the contagion occurs again: The horror of many.
Dutch researchers recently observed just that.
For some, a
coronavirus infection is
like a mild flu, others have to be treated in a clinic.
Pre-existing illnesses and other risk factors * such as smoking favor severe courses.
But with regard to a renewed infection with the coronavirus after surviving Covid 19 disease, doctors still know relatively little.
The reason for this is that Covid-19 is still a "young" disease: The first case became known in December 2019.
Cases of patients who
have contracted the virus again
are now being reported in various countries
- with potentially drastic consequences.
If a person becomes infected with a virus and survives the disease, the body forms so-called antibodies, which make a renewed infection milder - or even go unnoticed.
But what if the virus mutates, i.e. changes genetically?
The new structure of the virus is not recognized by the body and the acquired immune response cannot take effect - as far as the simplified explanation of the behavior of the human body
when pathogens such as viruses attack it
.
Applied to the coronavirus, this would mean: the less the virus changes - i.e. mutates - the better.
But there are indications that Sars-CoV-2 is very well able to change.
How dangerous the previous mutations are - this question is currently being investigated by countless scientists
.
Especially with regard to a renewed infection with the coronavirus, these research results are impatiently awaited by the experts.
Also read
: Immune to Corona?
Previous flu-like illnesses play a huge role in the fight against the virus
.
Patients are infected again with Covid-19 - too few antibodies formed after the first illness
In Belgium and the Netherlands there have already been renewed coronavirus infections - after surviving the illness.
As reported by the Dutch broadcaster NOS,
cases of patients who had become infected again - with a virus with an altered genetic variant - were reported
in Belgium and the Netherlands
.
In Belgium, for example, it was a patient who was infected again three months after the first Covid 19 disease had subsided.
Tagesschau.de quoted the Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst, who teaches at the Catholic University in Leuven, that she was obviously unable to produce enough antibodies during the first infection to avoid a second disease.
Poll on the subject
According to Ranst, it is unclear how many people there are who are infected again after six or seven months.
The woman in Belgium and the patient in the Netherlands are not an isolated case.In Hong Kong, a 33-year-old IT specialist tested positive for Covid-19 again months after he recovered from Covid-19.
In the opinion of doctors, all three affected persons from Belgium, the Netherlands and Hong Kong are not concerned with a "flare-up" of the first infection,
but with an infection with coronaviruses with an altered genetic variant.
"We know about other respiratory viruses such as cold viruses that they repeatedly outsmart our immune system and that we can get infected again and again, "quoted tagesschau.de Isabella Eckerle, head of the Center for Viral Diseases at the University of Geneva.
(jg) * Merkur.de is part of the Germany-wide Ippen digital editorial network
.
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