Britain sees first ‘credible’ cases of coronavirus reinfections – suggesting you’re not immune after recovering

HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock says Britain has seen the first “credible” cases of coronavirus reinfections – suggesting sufferers are NOT immune if they recover from the deadly bug once.

Worryingly, all the cases were asymptomatic, so the sufferers didn’t have any symptoms or sign that they had been struck by the virus again, and would not have known.

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Experts are still trying to establish whether they were infectious or not.

Matt Hancock warned this means Brits can suffer repeated bouts of Covid-19.

It came as he revealed fears of a possible second peak of coronavirus following a “rise in the number of cases and new restrictions in Bolton.

He said a recent spike in cases across the country should be a reminder that the virus “remains a threat”, and the crisis is “not over”.

He told the Health and Social Care Committee: ‘We have also just started to see the first credible cases of reinfection and, through genomic analysis, you can see it is a different disease to the one the person got the first time around.

“But in all the cases that I have seen it has been an asymptomatic second infection that has been picked up through asymptomatic testing… What we don’t yet know is the transmissibility of the disease."

Coronavirus deaths have risen by 30 today in the highest daily toll for a month. 

Today's figures show 41,584 have died of coronavirus in the UK to date and 2,420 people tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours.

The last time the death toll reached over 30 was on July 29 when 34 people died of COVID-19 across the UK.

Today's daily case tally of 2,420 includes figures for England, Scotland and Wales but not for Northern Ireland.

Public Health England - who help publish the UK government's daily figures - has not received the data for Northern Ireland's daily cases today.

This means 352,520 people have now tested positive for the virus in the UK to date.

Another 124 people were admitted to hospital across the UK today.

The news comes as cases rose by nearly 3,000 on both Saturday and Sunday - the highest rise in more than three months.

But while deaths have risen in comparison to August, the death toll is still significantly lower than at the pandemic's peak.

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