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New Delhi: In a worrisome development, the doctors in China have found that as many as 10 per cent patients who recovered from deadly coronavirus tested positive again after being discharged from the hospital, according to a report.

Doctors in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei Province and the former epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, have found that about three to 10 per cent of recovered patients became reinfected with the illness, though it’s unclear whether they were contagious the second time, the South China Morning Post reported.

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Tongji Hospital, where the disease was first identified, five of the 145 discharged patients - a little over three per cent - they studied tested positive for the virus yet again post-recovery. Moreover, the quarantine facilities in Wuhan have also reported that about five to 10 percent of their recovered patients tested positive in nucleic acid tests again.

“So far there is no evidence to suggest that they are infectious,” said Wang Wei, President of Tongji Hospital.

According to Wang, surveillance of similar patients showed about 80 to 90 per cent of them had no trace of the coronavirus in their blood one month after being discharged from hospitals, the report said.

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He further stated that another sample group of 15 patients from the hospital also confirmed a similar trend, with none infecting their family members.

“These are just small samples and not enough to assure us of the validity of our initial findings,” Wang said. “We need a large-scale epidemiological study to guide our disease surveillance and prevention works.”

Over 5 lakh infected globally

The total number of coronavirus cases across the world has risen to 531,806 with 123,942 recovered from the infection. The virus has claimed the lives of 24,073 people globally so far.

The United States has now surpassed China with the highest number of COVID-19 patients around the world. At least 82,404 people in the country are known to have been infected with the deadly coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

While Italy has around 80,539 COVID-19 cases, China's tally stands at 81,285.

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