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An 89-year-old Dutch woman recently passed away after being infected with covid-19 for the second time. It is the first death in the world that has been described after a reinfection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the coronavirus is officially called. The woman had underlying suffering: she was suffering from Waldenstrom's disease, a rare form of bone marrow cancer. Her immune system was affected.
The patient reported to the emergency department of a hospital in the south of the country this year. She had a fever and was coughing heavily. The woman tested positive for the coronavirus. After five days, the symptoms had passed and she was released from the hospital. She just suffered from fatigue.
Two months later a new course of chemotherapy started for her. After two days the patient developed a fever again, started to cough and became short of breath. She was readmitted and tested positive again. The patient tested negative twice for antibodies against the virus in her blood. On day 8 of admission, her condition deteriorated sharply and she died two weeks later.
Other cases
Worldwide, 23 cases are known of re-infections with the coronavirus. The first case involved a 33-year-old from Hong Kong. Then more followed. In most of these cases, the reinfection was less severe than the original infection.
In the now deceased Dutch, but also in a 25-year-old American from Nevada, the second infection was actually more serious. The American survived it. Both became reinfected within two months of their initial infection. Most other known cases of reinfection took longer for reinfection to occur.
It is still unclear what this means for building up resistance against the virus. Antibodies created after an initial infection appear to disappear relatively quickly according to various studies. It is not yet clear to what extent the innate immune system learns enough during an infection to prevent a re-infection.