Today let’s talk about COVID-19 and immunity. With many viruses, once your body fights it off, you’ve beaten it and it doesn’t come back. But that isn’t always a forgone conclusion with all viruses. And with COVID-19 we have been quickly learning to not take such things for granted…
Now scientists in South Korea believe that they can now say with some confidence that you will not catch COVID-19 a second time. After evaluating 277 patients who had been believed to catch the virus a second time, they discovered that the PCR (nasal swab) test used to diagnose infection, could not tell the difference between live and dead virus in a person, and that the cases of suspected re-infection were all false positives caused by this error. It is also believed due to the nature of the virus, that it should not be able to lay dormant within the body and cause later relapses, like Chicken Pox or HIV. More info can be found here.
The above article helps us to better understand this next report, about a woman who has tested positive for COVID-19 at least twice in 6 weeks, and believes herself to have been reinfected (click here for details). However now that we know that the PCR test used can still return false positives even several weeks after the virus is dead and no longer able to be passed on, we can know that this situation is a case of prolonged or reoccurring symptoms. More info on long lasting symptoms can be found here.
And finally, if you are a BC resident and you have previously been approved for the Federal CERB benefit program, you can now also apply for the BC $1000 benefit as well. Click here for the link to the application.
That’s all for now, stay safe everyone!
BC COVID-19 Info 