Experts say no conclusions on immunity can be drawn from one patient - and larger studies are needed.
, due to be published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, says the man spent 14 days in hospital before recovering from the virus but then, despite having no further symptoms, tested positive for the virus a second time, following a saliva test during airport screening.
"This is a very rare example of reinfection," said Brendan Wren, professor of microbial pathogenesis, at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."It is to be expected that the virus will naturally mutate over time." Dr Jeffrey Barrett, senior scientific consultant for the Covid-19 genome project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said:"Given the number of global infections to date, seeing one case of reinfection is not that surprising even if it is a very rare occurrence.
"It may be that second infections, when they do occur, are not serious - though we don't know whether this person was infectious during their second episode." Prof Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said more information about this and other cases of reinfection was needed"before we can really understand the implications".
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