Kerala medical student, first in India to get Covid in 2020, contracts virus again

The patient had earlier tested positive for Covid on 30 January 2020 after returning home from Wuhan university for semester holidays and recovered after 3 weeks of treatment.

File photo of health workers preparing to collect swab samples for Covid-19 tests in Kerala | PTI

Thrissur: A woman medico, who was India’s first COVID-19 case, has tested positive again for the virus, health authorities said here on Tuesday.

“She is reinfected with COVID-19. Her RT-PCR is positive, antigen is negative. She is asymptomatic,” Thrissur DMO Dr K J Reena told PTI.

Her samples were tested as she was prepared to go to New Delhi for study purposes.

Then the RT-PC Rresult turned out to be positive, she said.

The woman is presently at home and “she is OK,” the doctor said.

It was on January 30, 2020 that the third year medical student from Wuhan university tested positive for coronavirus, becoming the country’s first COVID-19 patient, days after she had returned home following semester holidays.

After nearly three weeks of treatment at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital, she had tested negative twice for the virus, confirming her recovery, and was discharged on February 20, 2020.