News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Recovered virus patients retest positive due to 'dead' virus fragments: experts. Parent comment

Re:Recovered virus patients retest positive due to 'dead' vi... by eloff on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @03:17PM (#23023003)
That's how immunity against pathogens usually works. There are exceptions like the flu which mutates into sufficiently distinct strains that the immune system doesn't (fully) recognize. I'm still oversimplifying here.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Recovered virus patients retest positive due to 'dead' vi... by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @03:51PM (#23023372)
Well viruses in general, AFAIK, mutate - and that's how we trace their movement through the infected: you sample the virus and look at the mutations eg https://nextstrain.org/ncov.

Do we know for sure that Covid19 in N.Europe isn't sufficiently mutated over that in Australia, say, that secondary infection is possible (even if recovered people's antibodies recognise it somewhat)?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Recovered virus patients retest positive due to 'dead' vi... by eloff on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @05:41PM (#23024725)
We don't know much for sure.

What I've heard from experts in the field, but I don't have sources, is that the type of RNA virus is different from influenza and doesn't mutate as quickly - which is potentially good news for those hoping for a vaccine.

[ Parent | on HN ]