Europe’s Coronavirus Reinfection Cases Involve Dutch and Belgian Patients

AMSTERDAM/BRUSSELS, KOMPAS.com – European public broadcasters reported that there have been coronavirus reinfection cases involving Dutch and Belgian patients.

The two European Covid-19 patients’ confirmed diagnosis raises concerns about people’s immunity to the novel virus.

Globally, governments are struggling to control the coronavirus pandemic.

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Europe’s coronavirus reinfection news comes after a report this week by Hong Kong researchers who found that a man had been reinfected four and a half months after he was declared recovered.

That has fuelled fears about the effectiveness of potential vaccines against the virus, though experts say there would need to be many more cases of reinfection for these to be justified.

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Broadcasters said on Tuesday a patient in the Netherlands and another in Belgium had also been reinfected with the virus that has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide and crippled the global economy.

Dutch broadcaster NOS cited virologist Marion Koopmans as saying the patient in the Netherlands was an older person with a weakened immune system.

She said that cases where people have been sick with the virus a long time and it then flares up are better known.

But a true reinfection, as in the Dutch, Belgian, and Hong Kong cases, requires genetic testing of the virus in both the first and second infection to see whether the two instances of the virus differ slightly.

Koopmans, an adviser to the Dutch government, said reinfections had been expected.

"That someone would pop up with a reinfection, it doesn't make me nervous," she said. "We have to see whether it happens often."

Dutch Health Ministry officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told Belgian broadcaster VRT he had not been surprised by the Hong Kong reinfection.