key: cord-0847192-99cgvtlu
authors: Kang, Hanyujie; Wang, Yishan; Tong, Zhaohui; Liu, Xuefeng
title: Retest positive for SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA of “recovered” patients with COVID‐19: Persistence, sampling issues, or re‐infection?
date: 2020-06-09
journal: J Med Virol
DOI: 10.1002/jmv.26114
sha: dc44a3dc4a97c4a437f989e66567c83e37e84326
doc_id: 847192
cord_uid: 99cgvtlu

“Retest Positive” for severe acute respiratory syndrome‐related coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) from “recovered” coronavirus disease‐19 (COVID‐19) has been reported and raised several important questions for this novel coronavirus and COVID‐19 disease. In this commentary, we discussed several questions: (a) Can SARS‐CoV‐2 re‐infect the individuals who recovered from COVID‐19? This question is also associated with other questions: whether or not SARS‐CoV‐2 infection induces protective reaction or neutralized antibody? Will SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccines work? (b) Why could some recovered patients with COVID‐19 be re‐tested positive for SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA? (c) Are some recovered pwith atients COVID‐19 with re‐testing positive for SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA infectious? and (d) How should the COVID‐19 patients with retest positive for SARS‐CoV‐2 be managed?

is also associated with other questions: whether or not SARS-CoV-2 infection induces protective reaction or neutralized antibody? Will SARS-CoV-2 vaccines work? 

Host immune response to pathogens may prevent progression to from subsequent re-exposures. 18 Previous study showed that immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody peaked at month 4 after the onset of SARS, IgG antibodies persisted for 16 months in all patients. In patients with COVID-19, antibodies were also detected in patients' blood after being infected by SARS-CoV-2, the immunity lasted for at least 7 days following remission of symptoms. 21 SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralizing antibodies were detected in patients from day 10 to 15 after the onset of the disease and remained thereafter. The titers of these antibodies among these patients correlated with the spike-binding antibodies targeting S1, receptor-binding domain, and S2 regions, although antibody titers were variable in different patients. 16 Therefore, it is needed for further studies in animal and human for long time follow-up to rule out the possibility for re-infection of SARS-CoV-2. 

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