Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah at a press conference in Putrajaya April 13, 2020. — Picture by Choo Choy May

PUTRAJAYA, April 21 — Antibodies of recovered Covid-19 patients cannot guarantee their immunity to prevent a reinfection, Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.

In a press conference here, the director-general of the Ministry of Health (MOH) said that the 3,349 patients who recovered, were tested again, and only after their test results came back negative, were they discharged.

“As how I said before, there are two possibilities. One possibility is that they got reinfection, so before being discharge, we will give them counselling to prevent reinfection

“Secondly, if we take tests, and I already mentioned that there were three cases before this and now there are five, whereby maybe those tests return positive, but a weak positive, whereby virus shedding is taking place.

“In that kind of situation, even when it’s a weak positive, but it won’t infect, as that is the virus shedding process. From the residual virus, shedding is taking place,” he explained.

Dr Noor Hisham then said one patient who was discharged from Malaysia after recovering, and upon returning to Brunei, was tested positive again for Covid-19

He said that when a joint research was done with the Brunei Health Ministry and the Institute of Medical Research, the virus was found to be a weak positive strain.

“There is a possibility that when they are infected, rightfully when they have recovered, they already have the antibody, but now, in the research papers, there is no data to date, to show that that antibody can protect someone from getting reinfected,” Dr Noor Hisham added.

Earlier today, The Star reported that five Covid-19 patients who were reported to have recovered in Sandakan and Kinabatangan were later found to be still infected, in a follow-up test two days later.

This was after the State Health Department announced that 19 patients in Sandakan and 16 in Kinabatangan had recovered.

The report however said that total number of recovered patients was revised two days later, with Sandakan reporting 17 recoveries while Kinabatangan reported 13.

Sabah Health Department Datuk Dr Christina Rundi reportedly said all the patients were considered to have recovered after two tests showed they tested negative for Covid-19.

She was reported saying that five patients subsequently came up positive in follow-up tests.

The Star reported that as of today, Sabah recorded a total of 308 Covid-19 positive cases with 118 people still undergoing treatment.