Your Coronavirus Questions, Answered: Interview with Dr. Keusch
Original article from WKU by , 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has already infected thousands in the Ohio Valley and upended life and work for nearly all of us. In such a fast-moving pandemic, it can be hard to keep all the information straight. The Ohio Valley ReSource and its partner stations asked you what you wanted to know, and took your questions to someone with answers.
Dr. Gerald Keusch is a professor of medicine and international health at Boston University, and the director of the Collaborative Research Core at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory. I posed your questions to him Wednesday. His responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Ohio Valley ReSource: A listener at WKYU wants to know, when someone recovers fully from the coronavirus, are they then immune from catching this strain of the coronavirus again?
Dr. Gerald Keusch: Well, the honest answer is, we don’t know, and maybe. We don’t have the data. There are a couple of anecdotes in China that say people who have been ill, recovered, can get infected again, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve been reinfected; that may mean they have a relapse.