Only six patients remaining at Coloane’s clinical center

The Macau SAR has no active cases of Covid-19, with only six recovered patients remaining at the Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane.
The city confirmed its first Covid-19 case on January 22, when a woman from Wuhan tested positive. Initially during the first wave, the city only recorded a total of ten patients who tested positive for the virus, yet this soared to 46 cases during the second wave of the virus, consisting mostly of returnee residents from abroad.
The last patient, who was discharged Sunday from the public hospital, was a non-resident worker from the Philippines who had been hospitalized for a total of 39 days.
The migrant worker has been transferred to the Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane for a 14-day period of quarantine and medical observation.
Despite being cleared of Covid-19, Macau has seen three relapse cases among those who have recovered from the virus.
These three people have undergone treatment and were declared to have recovered from the virus.
One of them was the 15th confirmed case in the city, who was discharged from hospital isolation on April 12 and entered a convalescence period at the Public Health Clinical Centre in Coloane. On April 25 and 26, which were his 13th and 14th days at the Coloane center, he tested positive for Covid-19.
Health authorities have stressed that the relapse cases are not worrying and just prove that the system currently enforced in Macau is effectively detecting these cases before the patients are discharged and continue with their normal lives.
Cases of relapse are being seen also in other jurisdictions, including South Korea, Brunei, India and Vietnam.
According to reports, South Korean health experts noted such relapses might have occurred due to traces of virus fragments that have been inactivated.
In South Korea, more than 260 people who recovered and tested negative subsequently tested positive again. Experts from South Korea’s central clinical committee for emerging disease control say that there was no live virus present in such cases, positively refuting theories such as the virus being reactivated or becoming infectious again.
The apparent reinfection cases may have occurred as the virus’s genetic information, or RNA, fragments remained in their bodies, and showed up in test kits.
“RNA fragments can still exist in a cell even if the virus is inactivated,” the committee explained in a press release. “It is more likely that those who tested positive again picked up virus RNA that had already been inactivated.”