Can you catch Covid twice? Top scientist says risk is ‘low’ but admits as many as 10% of recovered patients could get the virus again as self-isolating Boris Johnson claims he’s ‘bursting with antibodies’
- Imperial College’s Danny Altmann said recovered patients ‘should not be blasé’
- Scientists have found ‘hard confirmed’ cases of people infected twice with Covid
- But they don’t agree on whether reinfections tend to be better or worse than first
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson is self-isolating after contact with infected MP
- The PM had Covid-19 in April and became so ill he ended up in intensive care
People who have already had Covid-19 ‘should not be blasé’ about the virus because as one in 10 people could catch it again, a top scientist has warned.
Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, today said the rate of coronavirus reinfection is ‘quite a lot higher’ than data suggests.
His comments come as Prime Minister Boris Johnson goes into a fortnight of self-isolation after coming into close contact with an MP who later tested positive.
The PM, however, claims he is ‘bursting with antibodies’ after he ended up in intensive care during his own severe bout of Covid-19 in the country’s first wave.
Professor Altmann, however, said that although the risk of catching the disease again is ‘low’, it could happen to as many as one in 10 people and recovered patients should still take it very seriously.
Scientists have reported dozens of cases of coronavirus reinfection but the circumstances around them are often hazy, with it possible that some people never recovered from the first illness and others with dysfunctional immune systems.
The Imperial expert said there had been around 25 ‘hard confirmed cases’ in the world of people catching Covid-19 twice, but that researchers think it is far more common. Whether it is more or less serious, he said, is still a topic for debate.
Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, said people who have already had coronavirus ‘should not be blasé’ about the risk of catching it a second time
‘I read a lot about people saying one can’t be reinfected or there’s practically zero risk of reinfection,’ he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘That’s not quite true because, of 50million plus cases of infection in the world, we have more than 25 hard confirmed cases of reinfection, which you might say is negligible, but that’s because academically we set the bar quite high for defining reinfection.
‘You have to be SARS positive and then negative and then positive again and [with] different virus sequences and things.
‘Anecdotally, I think most of us think the rate of reinfection is quite a lot higher than that but not enormous.’
Professor Altmann’s comments come as the Prime Minister announced he has had another Covid scare after catching the virus in April left him in critical condition.
Boris Johnson today insisted he can run the country by Zoom as he hit back against criticism of his mask-free meeting with a coronavirus-infected Tory MP.
Mr Johnson will spend two weeks alone in his flat at 11 Downing Street after he met with Conservative MP Lee Anderson last week and Anderson later tested positive.
The move comes at a time of extreme turbulence in Downing Street after the PM’s top aides Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain both resigned last week.
But Mr Johnson insisted in a Twitter video today that he is ‘fit as a butcher’s dog’.
He said: ‘It doesn’t matter that we were all doing social distancing, it doesn’t matter that I’m fit as a butcher’s dog, feel great – so many people do in my circumstances.
‘And actually it doesn’t matter that I’ve had the disease and I’m bursting with antibodies. We’ve got to interrupt the spread of the disease and one of the ways we can do that now is by self isolating for 14 days when contacted by Test and Trace.’
On Thursday, the Prime Minister held a 35-minute meeting with a group of MPs including Mr Anderson who later tested positive for the virus. Pictured: The PM and Mr Anderson at Thursday’s meeting