Covid-19 may also be much worse the second time around. During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat. His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.
Recent reports and conversations with physician colleagues suggest my patient is not alone. Two patients in New Jersey, for instance, appear to have contracted Covid-19 a second time almost two months after fully recovering from their first infection. Daniel Griffin, a physician and researcher at Columbia in New York, recently described a case of presumed reinfection on the This Week in Virology podcast.
It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months. Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed “long haulers”) do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.
My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks.
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I am aware that my patient represents a sample size of one, but taken together with other emerging examples, outlier stories like his are a warning sign of a potential pattern. If my patient is not, in fact, an exception, but instead proves the rule, then many people could catch Covid-19 more than once, and with unpredictable severity.
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