Gujarat: Ahmedabad reports four cases of Covid-19 're-infection'

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Monday said that it has detected four cases of coronavirus "re-infection", among a 60-year-old housewife and three resident doctors. Officials said that one of the patients visited Kerala before getting infected for the second time while the three others remained in the city.

However, expert doctors have said that there is no definite evidence to suggest recurrence of the virus as it requires a lot of research before arriving at a conclusion.

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Various reports suggest that even after recovery, the patient can be tested positive in the RT-PCR test for several months because of the virus residual left in the patient's body. Therefore, the reports suggest that a positive result in the RT-PCR test may not mean relapse.

Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Indian Institute of Public Health, said that the cases of reinfections are being reported in the world which needs to be documented to study them properly.

"The re-infection is quite possible. We are also seeing reports of long-hauliers who are not able to clear the virus as it keeps on lingering in their body," he added.

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The civic officials said that the case of a 60-year-old 're-infected' woman was reported to them by a local private doctor after suspecting Covid-19 symptoms. Among the three resident doctors, two work at LG Hospital and the third works at Gujarat Cancer and Research Institute (GCRI), Ahmedabad.

One of the four patients has recovered and was discharged while three others are being treated at GCRI hospital.

AMC officials said that these patients had been tested positive first time between April 13 and April 21 and reinfected between August 18 and September 6.

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The officials claim that these cases are "very much in line" with AMC seroprevalence surveys that claimed that a large number of previous infected cases have shown the loss of antibodies and there are chances of reinfection. It said that blood and nasopharyngeal samples of these four cases are being sent to Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre, Gandhinagar for genome sequencing and further analysis of the virus.

Meanwhile, the state recorded 1,330 new positive cases on Monday, taking the total caseload to 1,05,671. The death toll also increased to 3,120 with deaths of 15 more patients.