The discovery suggests that previous infections are not protective, and also raises the possibility that vaccinations may not provide the hope that we have been waiting for.
"Our study proves that immunity for COVID infection is not lifelong -- in fact, reinfection can occur quite quickly," said Kelvin Kai-Wang To, a microbiologist at Hong Kong University's Faculty of Medicine and lead author of a forthcoming study that details the findings.
This came as a surprise because the man had contracted -- and recovered from -- a COVID infection four-and-a-half months earlier, and was assumed to have immunity, especially after such a brief time since the infection. The first closely resembled strains collected in March and April, and the second strain matched the virus found in Europe -- where the patient had just been visiting -- in July and August.
"This is certainly stronger evidence of reinfection than some of the previous reports because it uses the genome sequence of the virus to separate the two infections," said Jeffrey Barret, a senior scientific consultant for the COVID-19 Genome Project at the Welcome Sanger Institute, commenting on the study.
"It suggests that previous infections are not protective. It also raises the possibility that vaccinations may not provide the hope that we have been waiting for."
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