Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has reported four cases of COVID-19 reinfection between August 18 and September 6, nearly four months after the patients tested positive for the first time, reported the Indian Express.
Among the four who tested positive again are two male resident doctors aged 33 years from the Gujarat Cancer and Research Institute (GCRI) and LG Hospital, a 26-year-old woman resident doctor from LG Hospital, and a 60-year-old homemaker from Behrampura.
They first tested positive between April 13 and 21. However, all of them recovered and tested negative.
The AMC in a press release said that among the four patients who tested positive again, “one has a history of a visit to Kerala just before the second infection whereas the other three were in Ahmedabad.”
The 60-year-old woman was discharged on Monday. While, among the three resident doctors, one is undergoing treatment at GCRI and is stable and the other two are in home isolation.
The cause of re-infection remains unknown. “While the three resident doctors may have been infected at the hospital, the source remains unknown in the case of the 60-year-old who was also incidentally the first case of ‘reinfection’ in Ahmedabad,” AMC officials said.
The release stated that the re-surfacing of the virus in cured patients was, “very much in line with AMC seroprevalence survey.”
According to the AMC study, 40 percent of cases that tested positive, lost antibodies and are susceptible to new infections.
According to AMC, all four people had mild to moderate symptoms the first time. Four months later, the three resident doctors’ samples reflected the absence of antibodies. However, the 60-year-old still had it.
Other cases of reinfection have also been reported, one in Hong Kong and the other in Bengaluru.
