Health Check Ep 42: Can a person get Covid-19 twice?

9:10 mins

Synopsis: Fortnightly on Wednesdays, The Straits Times guides you to healthier living and clears up common misconceptions on health with expert guests.

A man in Hong Kong was found to be reinfected with Covid-19 last month, less than five months after he was infected with the disease. Researchers at the University of Hong Kong said genome sequencing showed that the virus strain the man had last month was different from the one he was infected with in March.

ST senior health correspondent Joyce Teo hosts Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, the programme leader for infectious diseases at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

They discuss the following points: 

1. More serious coronaviruses like Sars or Mers, have led to longer immunity in patients but it remains to be seen if more cases of Covid re-infection emerge. Why immunity from Covid-19 might not be lifelong (1:38)

2. The patient in Hong Kong didn't seem to mount an antibody response after his first infection in March (3:10)

3. Making sense of the new strains of Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 (3:52)

4. Is the new prevalent global mutant strain D614G more lethal or transmissible? (5:33)

Produced by: Joyce Teo ([email protected]) and Ernest Luis

Edited by: Adam Azlee

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