After starting to see news headlines being shared about people recovering from the coronavirus and still testing positive, several viewers asked VERIFY if a person is able to test positive again for COVID-19.
Breaking down this claim, it’s important to note that testing positive a second time does not inherently mean the person gets sick a second time.
It came from stories like Reuters' on a woman in Japan who was reinfected with the coronavirus, testing positive after recovering from an earlier infection, according to the local government.
Can someone test positive again for COVID-19 after already getting over the symptoms?
Yes, per the World Health Organization, a person can test positive after they “clinically recover.”
It's unclear if this is evidence that the virus can actually come back into people's systems, or if there's some sort of error in testing.
WHAT WE FOUND
“We are aware that some patients are PCR positive after they clinically recover,” a WHO spokesperson wrote to VERIFY. “But we need systematic collection of samples from recovered patients to better understand how long they shed live virus.”
The WHO is currently working with their clinical experts to get more information on those individual cases.
"It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly," the official said.
According to their clinical management guidelines, a recovered patient can be discharged from the hospital after two consecutive negative results at least 24 hours apart.
The official also added that, "Based on the current studies available, there is a period of approximately two weeks between the onset of symptoms and clinical recovery of patients with a mild COVID-19 disease."
Because the coronavirus is a new disease, the WHO is still gathering a systematic collection of samples and epidemiological data from recovered patients to better understand the transmission of the virus after testing positive on a PCR test.
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