PUTRAJAYA: Patients who have recovered from the Covid-19 infection have been advised to take extra precautions as reports of re-infection surfaces.
Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said if discharged Covid-19 coronavirus patients fail to take precautionary measures and care for their personal hygiene, they could be at risk of contracting the virus for the second time.
He said the Health Ministry offers counselling to individuals recovered prior to their discharge to advice and caution them over the possibility of a re-infection.
“Even for all 22 of our (recovered) patients, before discharge, we need to have counselling with them (informing and educating them on personal care and hygiene) to reinforce that they can be reinfected again.
“So, they too need to take precautions. Re-infection is one of them (a possibility) that we can see. But we need it to be based on scientific data.
“(We need scientific data) to support (the possibility of re-infection),” he said at the Covid-19 press briefing at the Health Ministry here today.
Reuters on Feb 28 reported that there have a growing number of discharged patients in China and elsewhere who were testing positive for Covid-19 after recovering, sometimes weeks after being allowed to leave the hospital.
This, it cautioned, could make the epidemic harder to eradicate.
The report quoted experts as saying there are several ways discharged patients could fall ill with the virus again.
“Convalescing patients might not build up enough antibodies to develop immunity to the virus, and are being infected again. The virus also could be “biphasic“, meaning it lies dormant before creating new symptoms,” it said.
On Feb 21, former head of infectious diseases for Health Ministry Datuk Dr Christopher Lee had said patients who have been cured of Covid-19 are “highly unlikely” to get infected with the same virus again as once a patient contracted the virus, his body develops antibodies that will fight against the disease and ‘stay’ inside there for a while.
While former Deputy Health Minister Dr Lee Boon Chye, on Feb 15, said while it is feared that a re-infection can occur, but so far there is no evidence this could happen.
“Usually, after a viral infection it is rare to get a secondary infection by the same virus because we are protected by the immunity created,” he had said.