“Friends, I have tested positive again”. With these words, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, announced on Saturday, via Twitter, that he had Covid-24, for the second time, in less than 10 days.
The news was surprising, because the president had already tested negative in all the tests he underwent during the previous four days, the White House reported.
However, his doctor, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, attributed the relapse to a “rebound infection” caused by treatment with the drug Paxlovid, which he received during his first convalescence.
Despite not presenting symptoms, Biden announced that he was going back into confinement, although without stopping work.
What is it “rebound infection”?
It occurs when “a person diagnosed with Covid-19 in the last 2 weeks, after recovering, experience a ‘recurrence’, understood as the reappearance of symptoms or a new positive result in a test ”, Salvador Peiró, a doctor specializing in public health and a researcher in pharmacoepidemiology at FISABIO, a biomedical research foundation in Spain, explained to BBC Mundo.
The antiviral Paxlovid is pointed out as being responsible for “rebound infections” such as the one suffered by the US president. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)The occurrence One of these cases was warned last May by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a body that issued an alert specifying that the registered cases had something in common: those affected had received Paxlovid, the drug that is being used to treat high-risk people who have been infected with coronavirus.
“Some patients with a normal immune response, who completed a cycle of 5 days of Paxlovid for a laboratory-confirmed infection, after recovery they may experience a recurrence within 2 to 8 days,” the CDC reported.
What is the cause?
Thus, research points to Paxlovid, which combines two other drugs (Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir).
¿ sign Does this mean that the treatment is not effective or safe? No, said Dr. Amy Barczak, who in an interview for the Harvard University School of Medicine in the US, recalled that the remedy “reduced the risk of hospitalization or death of people at risk (immunocompromised) in a 10%”.
“The Antivirals change the dynamics of symptoms, they change the dynamics of the immune response, and they change the dynamics of how the virus is cleared,” she explained. “The real-world application of new drugs is more complex than clinical trials,” he added.
In a nutshell, the researchers believe that the drug may have caused the virus to trigger a secondary immune response, which manifests as mild symptoms of Covid-.
Peiró, for his part, admitted that they also observed “rebound infections” in “patients without treatment with Paxlovid”. “Even in the clinical trial they appeared in people from the control group treated with placebo.”
The drug was approved by the Mexican health authorities at the beginning of the year, as well as by the Brazilian ones and is in evaluation by those of Argentina.
No cause for alarm
Cases like Biden’s are not a cause for alarm for health authorities or scientists, at least until now. The reason? “The few data on the subject suggest that the rebound tends to produce mild symptoms that do not require new treatment with Paxlovid,” Peiró explained, adding: “The rebound does not imply that the virus has become resistant to the antiviral.”
Studies support that recurrences of Covid- tend to be less serious than the original infections and therefore the risks of hospitalization are lower. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)For your On the other hand, the CDC explained that the investigations, to date, have shown that, after 3 days, the patient’s condition tends to improve, without the need for additional medication.
Other The reason not to be alarmed is that what happened to Biden is the exception and not the rule. A Mayo Clinic study, published last June and for which the evolution of 493 high-risk patients infected with the coronavirus and who were treated with Paxlovid, revealed that only four of them experienced a recurrence ; that is, barely 0.8%.
However, other data from the US Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raise the number of likely occurrence of the rebound up to 2%.
Back home
Although it seems unlikely that someone who suffers from a “rebound infection” would see his life in danger, it could put others at risk. For this reason, the authorities and experts urge those affected to resume the rules of social distancing, to prevent them from infecting other people.
The authorities recommend those affected by “rebound infections ” that they use the masks again to avoid infecting other people. (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)From the The US CDC asks those who present symptoms of Covid- or test positive, after apparently having overcome it, that they remain isolated for 5 days.
At the end of the five days, the patient could return to his routine, as long as he does not present a fever during the 24 previous hours without the use of fever-reducing medications or if your symptoms improve.
The use of a mask is recommended during days after the bounce.
You may be interested:
BA.5 Ómicron: When is the exact moment in which you should do a home test for Covid
How to Currently differentiating Covid from a strong flu
Subvariant Ómicron BA.5: The different symptoms presented by vaccinated people who now get sick with Covid and those who did not get immunized
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss out on our best content.
- Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!126161605