Q&A on COVID-19 reinfection

4. How to distinguish rebound positivity from reinfection?

Rebound positivity refers to when a COVID-19 patient's nucleic acid retest is found to be positive again despite no longer having any symptoms of infection and meeting hospital discharge standards.

Patients with rebound positivity generally have no obvious clinical symptoms and are basically not infectious.

COVID-19 reinfection is equivalent to having a new infection. It is being infected a second time after recovery. There may be signs of clinical symptoms after reinfection, and the patient is infectious due to a high nucleic acid load.