Blood tests conducted in a small town in Germany are reported to have revealed that 14% of the population have been infected and have recovered and are 'therefore immune'.
Meanwhile South Korea reports 91 cases of people who have recovered and become re-infected. (There are different interpretations and many variables > Jung Ki-suck, professor of pulmonary medicine at Hallym University Sacred Heart hospital.)
During his regular addresses to the nation, Giammattei has repeatedly brandished the recuperados stat, now at 17.
I have been uncomfortable with this from the outset. I think anyone who has tested postive, regardless of whether or not they subsequently became symptomatic to any level, should exercise extreme caution in their lives until we have a fuller understanding of SARS-Cov-2. (Starting with Prince Charles...)
The disease itself — covid-19 — is the payload if you will, but it is coded into our species as much as it is into the virus and there is much circumstantial evidence to suggest that its severity is linked to a variety of quite different risk factors, but deep down the viral load and individual exposure would seem to be key. This is one reason why, on average, medical personnel seem to experience more severe symptoms.
It may well be that one 'recovers' from covid-19 when the viral load in one's lungs diminishes, yet at this stage we simply don't know if recuperados remain vulnerable to re-activation, and perhaps more crucially, whether some might become potential asymptomatic spreaders.
(On a separate and largely irrelevant note, when plague broke out in London in the spring of 1665, up to 200,000 people, in the main the wealthier and otherwise more mobile members of the community, hot-footed it to the countryside. Come the Autumn, the pestilence seemed to ease, but in truth what was happening was that survivors in the capital had greater resistance to infection, natural or acquired. So when the 200,000 started to return, it all kicked off again.)
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