Coronavirus: What is the Secondary Infection of Novel Coronavirus

On August 28, American researchers recently reported the country’s first case of secondary infection of the new Coronavirus. The patient was a 25-year-old man. Unlike the few cases of secondary infection with new Coronavirus reported in other countries and regions that have mild or asymptomatic symptoms, this case in the United States was more severe after the second infection with new Coronavirus.

This is a very serious situation for everyone, especially those who have recovered from COVID-19. According to the conventional understanding, the recovered patients contain a certain amount of new coronavirus antibodies in the blood, and they can have a certain resistance to the new coronavirus. If a second infection occurs, it indicates that the effectiveness of the antibody is suspected, and the same doubt to vaccine.

What is Secondary Infection

A secondary infection is an infection that occurs during or after treatment for another infection. It may be caused by the first treatment or by changes in the immune system. Two examples of a secondary infection are: A vaginal yeast infection after taking antibiotics to treat an infection caused by bacteria, defined by medlineplus.gov.

And Wikipedia defines it that while a primary infection can practically be viewed as, the root cause of an individual’s current health problem, a secondary infection is a sequela or complication of that root cause. For example, pulmonary tuberculosis is often a primary infection, but an infection that happened only because a burn or penetrating trauma (the root cause) allowed unusual access to deep tissues is a secondary infection. Primary pathogens often cause primary infection and also often cause secondary infection. Usually opportunistic infections are viewed as secondary infections (because immunodeficiency or injury was the predisposing factor).

In short, after recovering from infection with a certain virus, if you are infected with the same virus again, it is called a secondary infection, or reinfection.

Why is there a secondary infection?

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed that humans will produce antibodies after being infected with the virus, but not all the protective effects of antibodies produced by infectious diseases are lifelong, and antibodies will gradually decrease.

Although the case discovered this time has a variation in the genetic sequence of the virus strain, it is not an infection caused by the same strain, but at present, it is more likely that the human body’s immune protection effect is not so long, resulting in a “secondary infection”.

Is the vaccine still useful?

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Yuan Guoyong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chair professor of the Department of Microbiology at the Li Ka-shing School of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong, said that in fact, the patient in Hong Kong quickly developed antibodies and reduced the viral load during the second infection. He believes that the two-dose vaccination method will be the correct way to obtain reliable immunity.

However, he also said that how long the immune response after natural infection or vaccination is is still to be further studied. In addition, patients with mild COVID-19 may still need to be vaccinated to recover. This part of the group still needs to wear masks, observe hand hygiene and maintain social distance.

Some experts believe that even if the vaccine needs to be updated, it is not difficult to achieve technically, so there is no need to panic too much. Moreover, based on current understanding, the mutation of the new coronavirus is not as fast as the influenza virus.

Li Bin analyzed that there are at least five different strategies for vaccine development. Each strategy, even for some subunit protein vaccines, uses sequences of conserved regions of the virus, especially for the S protein bound to the ACE2 receptor on the host cell surface.

“No matter how the virus mutates, it always has to enter the cell to infect. To infect the cell, it must bind to the ACE2 receptor. Most vaccine development strategies are designed to prevent this combination.”

Conclusion

At present, the number of secondary infection patients found in the world is still in single digits, but it has been found in many countries and regions, the United States, Hong Kong, Europe, and there may be more secondary infection patients in the future. However, at present, the proportion of patients with secondary infections is still very low. WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said that we should not be overly worried about this matter at present, and then look at the following specific research results.

Panic will only make the situation worse. As long as we listen to the opinions and suggestions of experts, and strictly abide by them in our daily work and life, even stricter than the recommendations for transfer, we can protect ourselves and our family to a large extent.