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Coronavirus cured people are immune to infection

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 3/28/2020 1:33:37 AM

NEW DELHI, Mar 27: People who survive the coronavirus infection become immune to the virus and they can venture out of their homes even as the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of plasma from the recovered patients to treat some severe cases.
A report says New York would become the first state to begin testing serum from the recovered people to treat those who are seriously ill.
Most people who became infected during the SARS epidemic, that virus a close cousin of the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, had long term immunity lasting eight to 10 years, a virologist of University of Texas said. Those who recovered from MERS, another coronavirus, saw much short-term protection. The virologist said those infected with the new coronavirus may have immunity lasting one to two years as "beyond that, we can't predict."
Still even if antibody protection were short lasting and people become reinfected, the second bout would likely be much milder than the first, another microbiologist in New York said, noting that even after the body stops producing neutralising anti-bodies, a subset of immune memory will kick in. "You probably would make a good immune response before you even become symptomatic again and might really blunt the course of the disease," he said.
Meanwhile, the Indian health specialists have demanded an expansion of the current criteria to test patients about the novel coronavirus, citing the WHO report that a lockdown is only a part of the solution as the virus still needs to be found and attacked. They said no use hospitalising the patients under the existing criteria.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had last week expanded the testing criteria to include all hospitalised patients with severe respiratory illness, fever, cough and shortness of breath and asymptomatic direct and high risk contacts of the confirmed cases, which means healthcare workers and household members caring the positive cases.
Dr Yogesh Jain of Chhattisgarh associated with the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan says: "We need to quickly expand testing. Only then can we know the true burden of the infection in the country. We seem to be now trying to deny that the problem is big. But we still do not know the true size of the infection."
Today, the coronavirus testing facilities are available in over 110 government labs across the country and the ICMR has approved more than a dozen private labs that together offer more than 15,000 sample collection centres. But the JSA members say the lab expansion needed to be accompanied by broader criteria. The JSA says more and more people should be tested, not indiscriminately, but those who need should have access to the test.
More tests are in line with remarks of WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the countries that have locked down should use the time to "attack the virus." He said: "You have created a second window of opportunity. How do you use it? There are six key actions that we recommend that include train healthcare workforce, implement a system to find every suspected case at the community level, ramp up production capacity and availability of testing and identify, adapt and equip facilities to treat and isolate patients."