More concerning news about reinfection or reactivation
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea/south-korea-reports-recovered-coronavirus-patients-testing-positive-again-idUSKCN21S15X
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean officials on Friday reported 91 patients thought cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), told a briefing that the virus may have been “reactivated” rather than the patients being re-infected.
South Korean health officials said it remains unclear what is behind the trend, with epidemiological investigations still under way.
Re-activation might be preferable over re-infection, yet still not good.
“The number will only increase, 91 is just the beginning now,” said Kim Woo-joo, professor of infectious diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital.
The KCDC’s Jeong raised the possibility that rather than patients being re-infected, the virus may have been “reactivated”.
Kim also said patients had likely “relapsed” rather than been re-infected.
False test results could also be at fault, other experts said, or remnants of the virus could still be in patients’ systems but not be infectious or of danger to the host or others.
There's also still speculation of different strains going around. Well more than speculation actually, up to 8 strains discovered currently
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/27/scientists-track-coronavirus-strains-mutation/5080571002/
While researchers caution they're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, the tiny differences between the virus strains suggest shelter-in-place orders are working in some areas and that no one strain of the virus is more deadly than another. They also say it does not appear the strains will grow more lethal as they evolve.
“The virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other,” said Charles Chiu, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
So far the differences are so small it shouldn't matter for the effects and hopefully also not for a vaccine or anti bodies.
The COVID-19 virus does not mutate very fast. It does so eight to 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
It’s also not expected to spontaneously evolve into a form more deadly than it already is to humans. The SARS-CoV-2 is so good at transmitting itself between human hosts, said Andersen, it is under no evolutionary pressure to evolve.
It's a good way to track the virus apparently. Here you can see it spread as it evolves
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?dmax=2020-01-03&dmin=2019-12-24
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