While Delhi is witnessing a slowdown in the number of new daily cases, there is an emerging cause of worry for the authorities.?
Some hospitals in the national capital have said they are seeing recovered coronavirus patients returning to them with recurrence of the infection.
Earlier this month, the Delhi government-run Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital saw two instances of patients with relapse of coronavirus, almost one-and-a-half months after they were cured of the infection. In both the instances of relapse, the patients had moderate symptoms.
Aakash Healthcare in Dwarka had also reported a case where a cancer patient recovered from coronavirus and contracted the disease again after a couple of months. The second time proved fatal for the patient who succumbed to the virus.
Experts were left baffled last month when the case of a Delhi policeman having a relapse of the novel coronavirus had emerged.
In the same month, a similar case had surfaced in the national capital after a nurse employed at a civic-run dedicated COVID-19 hospital had tested positive again after recovering from the contagious disease.
Dr BL Sherwal, medical director of the Delhi government-run hospital, told news agency PTI that unless the virus is cultured or gene sequencing done, it will be difficult to determine whether it is a different strain of the virus that has infected the person the second time.
"There can be a relapse. The virus can be isolated from the body particularly from the sputum. We have evidence that after the ninth or tenth day the virus becomes non-infectious and the patients are not tested again," he said.
However, the virus has been reported to be living in patients who have recovered around 39 to 40 days back," he added.