Researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory have identified what appears to be the nation's first confirmed case of COVID-19 reinfection, NBC News reports.
The case is detailed in an online preprint, a study that has not yet been peer reviewed before officially being published.
The report describes a 25-year-old man who first tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-April. He recovered, but got sick again in late May. The second time around his illness was more severe and the genetic sequencing of the virus revealed that he had been infected with a slightly different strain, indicating a true reinfection, the case report said.
Reinfection with the coronavirus appears to be rare. This is the first case reported among the nation's nearly 6 million cases so far. The report comes several days after the first confirmed coronavirus reinfection in the world was identified in Hong Kong.
