KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 — Malaysia has yet to see any recovered coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patient being reinfected, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.
While reinfections were possible, he said the closest the country has come were some cases in which recovered patients still showed “weak positive” results in Covid-19 tests.
“From among the cases discharged, there are around two or three patients who are still showing weak positives, which is at the stage of virus shedding,” he said but added that they were no longer contagious at this point.
“So, in terms of cases still showing weak positives, there are only these few. There is still a possibility they could be reinfected but so far we have not had any,” he said during his daily Covid-19 press briefing.
Concerns about the possibility of becoming reinfected are valid as no viable vaccine and a cure for Covid-19 has yet to be developed.
While at least two vaccine candidates have entered accelerated human trials, most estimates put the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine in the 12- to 24-month region.
Matters are exacerbated by the growing evidence that the majority of Covid-19 patients do not display clear signs of infection, with Dr Noor Hisham previously disclosing that 88 per cent of the country’s cases were either asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic.
The immune response to Covid-19 is not yet known but a small study previously conducted in Shanghai, China, found that only a third of recovered patients developed low levels of antibodies while others did not show any traces at all.
Globally, Covid-19 infections are pushing close to 1.8 million cases with nearly 110,000 deaths.
