Coronavirus: How worried should we be about reports of reinfection?

By Jessica Hamzelou

In recent weeks, the first confirmed reports of people who have been reinfected with the coronavirus have begun to trickle in. Such cases suggest that, in some people at least, the immune system doesn’t develop lasting protection against the virus. How worried should we be?

Immunologists weren’t surprised that there were cases of reinfection, as we see this all the time with many viruses, such as seasonal strains of the flu. This may be because the defences raised by our immune systems …