Israeli Doctor Contracts COVID-19 Months after Recovering from Disease

Femi Ashekun/

A doctor in Israel has been diagnosed with COVID-19 a second time, months after testing negative, according to the Times of Israel.

The doctor, who had been working at Sheba Medical Center in the city of Ramat Gan, four miles east of Tel Aviv, reportedly tested positive in April but recovered from the illness, which has infected around 55,000 in Israel, and then tested negative twice in May and June.

But this month, after coming into contact with an infected patient, the unnamed doctor has tested positive for COVID-19 again.

The case is one of a number of possible “reinfections” that raise questions about the immunity people develop after catching the coronavirus, and whether people can get it more than once.

So far, there have been no scientifically proven cases of someone catching it twice, with experts tending to blame inaccurate test results or lengthy illness. Some say it is not uncommon for parts of viruses to keep circulating even after recovery.

The female doctor reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus again after she had been in contact with an infected patient, The Times of Israel reported.

Traditional understanding of viruses suggests that people who have had COVID-19 already should develop a level of immunity that is at least temporary.

But cases such as this one call the idea of natural protection into question.

A patient at the hospital had reportedly experienced the same phenomenon recently.

As well as concerns about reinfection, there are also signs that people may simply remain ill for a long time with the virus still circulating in their bodies.

Professor Gabriel Izbicki, from Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, said it was “frightening” how long people were suffering with the disease.

He told the Times of Israel: “More than half the patients, weeks after testing negative, are still symptomatic.”

A scientific paper entitled ‘A case report of possible novel coronavirus 2019 reinfection’ was published in the US recently describing the case of an 82-year-old man who was hospitalised twice by the virus.

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