First Covid reinfection case appears in JK

Jammu Tawi, Sep 13: Jammu and Kashmir has reported its first case of coronavirus re-infection – a dental surgeon – who first tested positive in July and was discharged upon full recovery.

The case of Covid-19 re-infection surfaced at tertiary-care SKIMS hospital in Srinagar for the first time, officials said.

While confirming the re-infection case, Director SKIMS Dr AG Ahanger said the clinicians of the hospital gave their report on Saturday morning. “As of now, there is confirmation of one re-infection,” he told agencies.

The Director said the patient with re-infection was first affected with Covid-19 about six weeks ago. “He had recovered after treatment (but) developed symptoms again. And we have just detected that the same patient has again tested positive. The patient is recovering,” he said and added another patient admitted at the hospital is a suspected re-infection case as of now.

The case of re-infection raises worrying questions about controlling and ending the Covid-19 pandemic as cases continue to rise in J&K – which has seen over 1,000 new cases every day for the last 10-days.

Cases of Covid-19 re-infection have also been reported from Karnataka, Telangana and Maharashtra in India, and other countries, including Hong Kong, US, Netherlands and Belgium, alarming health experts, as the world continues to battle the highly infectious disease.

The first case of Covid-19 re-infection was observed in Hong Kong on August 24, where a 33-year-old man who had recovered tested positive again, four and a half months later.

However, scientists within and outside the country have said re-infections are rare and there is no reason for alarm just yet. They believe that it is too early to draw conclusions from the individual re-infection cases and more research needs to be done.