“The virus, the immune response to the virus, the situation of the lungs, and then other underlying conditions that may make things worse. So seeing variations during infection is not unusual. With regards to a recovery, and then re-infection, I believe we do not have the answers to that. That is an unknown. One would expect that a person who generates a full blown immune response with detectable antibodies should have protection for a period of time,” he said and added: “We just don’t know what that period of time is. We would expect that to be a reasonable period of protection, but it is very difficult to say that with a new virus, and we can only extrapolate from other coronaviruses. And even that, in there, that data is quite limited.”

The coronavirus pandemic, which was first identified in Wuhan, China, and was declared a pandemic by WHO on March 11, has until now infected 1,930,979 people, killing at least 120,074 worldwide. (ILKHA)