Fantastic news: Scientists conclude we cannot be infected twice.
A total of 277 patients in South Korea were believed to have fallen ill for a second time, as had patients in China and Japan. However, these reported cases of coronavirus patients relapsing after overcoming the disease were actually due to testing failures, South Korean scientists say.
Researchers at the South Korean centre for disease control and prevention (CDC) now say it is impossible for the COVID-19 virus to reactivate in human bodies.
There had been concerns that the virus could be mutating so quickly that people were not necessarily immune to catching it again. However, genetic analyses of the virus have not found any substantial changes which would effectively disguise it from the immune system.