Case Report: Reinfection of COVID-19, with second infection less severe

Abstract

There is concern that an individual may contract COVID-19 twice, either as a result of being a viral carrier that was not entirely cleared from the body in the first instance or as a result of reinfection. The recurrent infection may be qRT-PCR positive, which must be distinguished from post-COVID-19 symptoms that are qRT-PCR negative. Although it is known that recovered patients of viral diseases can be immune for the next infection, recurrent infections of COVID-19 have been recorded in Brazilian healthcare workers. We report a case of recurrent COVID-19 infection in a 34-year-old man working in the Gynecology and Children Hospital in Al-Muthanna Province, south of Iraq. The patient suffered from a sharp and noticeable rise in the body temperature at 39 ºC and cough on the 16th of July 2020. Then, the patient was symptomized with another course of COVID-19 on the 27th of August 2020, which was contracted from the patient’s workmate. Nose swab PCR test and CT scan were performed to confirm the second infection. The clinical signs of repeated infection with coronavirus were obviously less than the first infection of the same patient. It is clear that the first infection symptoms of COVID-19 are more severe than the signs of recurrent disease.