Has anyone had covid twice?

[2020needstobeoverwith]

Just that really.

Has anyone who tested positive before in like last 3 months, tested positive again a couple of months later?

Apparently a great aunt has tested positive twice (tested during separate hospital stays), she lives in a care home

I know someone who this has happened to as well.

Funny how it's always someone's brother, or aunt or postman's daughters teacher that's this stuff has always happened too... Never the actual person!

I work in a hospital.
We have a lady who has had frequent admissions recently.
She was positive in April. Negative on her admission 6 weeks later. Positive on the admission 3 weeks after that.

Possible false negative in the middle, we don't know. She was symptomatic first positive and asymptomatic second.

I know a nurse who tested positive for 10 weeks straight despite only being ill for a week. I think it is possible it is the same infection like her, not a new one

Could be dead virus shedding

There are loads of people who have tested negative and then later tested positive again but that doesn’t necessarily meant they’ve had it twice. I don’t think anyone has been definitely shown to have caught it twice, it could be that they are recovering a bit, testing negative and then getting a resurgence of the virus. The tests are known to produce false negatives, especially in asymptomatic people.

If the person has had it 10 weeks or whatever.

Does that mean they are contagious for that amount of time does anyone know...

Yes, I know someone who has tested positive then negative then positive again. This was a hospital patient where I work. The patient was treated as if it was a second infection, ie isolated and transferred to a Covid ward, but it was unknown as if it was actually a second infection or not. Could have been a false negative in the middle.

I still have relapses of Covid symptoms 4 months after having it. I think it could be the initial illness still flaring up.

@Forgone90

Funny how it's always someone's brother, or aunt or postman's daughters teacher that's this stuff has always happened too... Never the actual person!

I only know one me but I know a hell of a lot more other people.

I don’t know anyone personally. There are multiple cases in Iran esp among healthcare workers & growing reports of cases in the US - some health boards are reporting them in line with CDC definition of reinfection which is 3 months, I think. You will only really see it in countries where there’s ongoing & prolonged high levels of community transmission, ie Iran, US, Brazil. Sweden Is more difficult to spot because I think it has said there has to be 6 month gap so it won’t be recording any reinfections sooner than that.

@flibbertmygibbert good point!

A colleague of mine still testing positive after a month. She has no symptoms whatsoever and feels very well. She's getting pissed off with it, and rightly so as she really needs to get back to work.

I was told that most people who’ve had the virus will continue to have positive swabs for 8-10 weeks after infection, but that they won’t be able to pass the virus on after the initial infective period. Apparently it’s because of particles of the dead virus (or something)

This was studied quite a while ago in South Korea. As MsWonderful said, the conclusion was the second positives were ‘false positives’ in that live samples were indistinguishable from harmless dead samples, that hang around after recovery, in the tests being used. The ‘dead samples‘ do not mean people are still able to pass it on.

Can You Get Covid-19 Again? It’s Very Unlikely, Experts Say:
www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/health/covid-antibodies-herd-immunity.html

"anecdotal reports have described alleged reinfections—people who apparently catch COVID-19 a second time, and who test positive for the coronavirus again after months of better health. Such cases are concerning, but hard to interpret. Viral RNA—the genetic material that diagnostic tests detect—can stick around for a long time, and people can test positive for months after they’ve cleared the actual virus. If someone like that caught the flu and went to their doctor, they might get tested for coronavirus again, get a positive result, and be mistakenly treated as a case of reinfection. “It’s really hard to prove reinfection unless you sequence the genes of the virus” both times, Iwasaki says. “No one has that data, and it’s unreasonable to expect.”

Immunity lasts a lifetime for some diseases—chickenpox, measles—but eventually wears off for many others. As the pandemic drags on, we should expect at least a few instances in which people who’ve beaten COVID-19 must beat it again. So far, the fact that reinfections are still the subject of smattered anecdotes suggests that “it’s happening at a very low rate, if at all,” Cobey says. But remember: A bigger pandemic is a weirder pandemic. When there are almost 5 million confirmed cases, something that occurs just 0.1 percent of the time will still affect 5,000 people.
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-immunity-is-the-pandemics-central-mystery/614956/

She has no symptoms whatsoever
Surely if you test positive but are asymptomatic you are immune to the virus, or at least immune to the pathogenic capacity of the virus?

I believe there are cases where they have tested positive and then 10 weeks later they are positive - the question that cropped up though is - 'is it continuous positive result or two incidencees in the same person'? It is known that a person can test positive for weeks but these are people in a very serious state.

I wondered if responses to this question have changed at all a few months down the line

I think the chances of actually being infected with Covid twice over since the pandemic began are probably almost zero.

There are some people on here (not on this thread, I mean MN generally) who seem almost desperate for any sort of natural immunity to Covid to not be a thing! Adds to the drama I guess.....

When I had it I got over it after a month and had a couple of flare ups , at 5 and 10 days after it had cleared up, and another 2 weeks later. My immune system isn't brilliant so I think it just took me a while to properly shake off that initial infection.

A friend (who is a nurse) has tested positive for Covid twice - once in June and then again a couple of weeks ago. She says it feels completely different both times too, totally different symptoms.

There are definitely cases that imply you can get it twice.. for example this cyclist would have tested negative at least twice at the Giro before testing positive, and had tested positive previously in March.
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/54612253

Should add, she was routinely tested at work between July and October, and tested negative each time until she was unwell and tested positive again a few weeks ago.