COVID-19 Reinfection Is Reality, Second Wave Won’t Be Worse: Experts

As we enter the sixth month of the coronavirus pandemic and the number of cases continues to rise, two questions are being asked: Is coronavirus reinfection is possible? Are we already in the second wave or it is yet to come?

Dr Om Srivastava, Director of Infectious Diseases Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai, told India Today, that firstly, the existence of reinfection in itself has not been fully established for now and secondly, symptoms are no sign or a repeat infection and it requires a proper procedure.

Called whole-genome sequencing, this procedure is carried out in a laboratory, said Dr Srivastava, who’s also a member of the Covid-19 task force.

Besides, “These tests/diagnosis are done only in reference labs like the National Institute of Virology. This can’t happen in ordinary labs. Hence, one cannot say orally that a person has had the second Covid19 infection. There is a method of establishing it,” he told India Today.

What are the precautions?

“If this is a second wave of Covid-19 that we are seeing then one needs to do exactly what we have been doing in the first wave. Wearing a mask, cleaning hands, and maintaining social distancing whenever stepping out. Else, the advantage that we have had during the lockdown will get lost,” Dr Srivastava was quoted as saying by India Today.

Reinfection does exist

“There was a lot of speculation on the second infection but with the recent report in Korea where the virus genome was sequenced and it was established that this indeed was true reinfection with mutation and changes in the amino acid sequences, proved beyond doubt that the reinfection can happen,” Dr Shruti Tandan, Consultant Critical Care Medicine at Jaslok Hospital was quoted as saying by India Today.

A few samples from Mumbai have already been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) and the COVID-19 task force in Mumbai is awaiting the results, the report added.

Will the second wave be worse?

“It is definitely not going to be worse than the first because, in the first wave itself, a large portion of the population would have been infected and would have had immunity as well. So even if they get reinfection, it’s not going to be a severe infection but a mild disease. The second wave is not going to be worse than the first wave both in terms of numbers and severity. With an increasing number of cases, there will be some amount of herd immunity that will happen and that’s going to protect the numbers from going up,” Dr Tandan, said in the report.