Four months after she first tested positive for COVID-19, Meredith McKee has been diagnosed for a second time, after yet again presenting “clear and obvious” symptoms.
“I had a dry cough like you would not believe. It would not stop,” McKee told NBC 5 of her first time contracting the virus. As one of the lucky ones, she was able to fully recover at home, or so she thought. Last week after experiencing high blood pressure and a headache, she headed to Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas for answers. McKee said she was “floored when it was positive.”
Her doctors say that this was actually a resurgence of the virus, though, rather than a reactivation. According to Healthline, Dr. Benjamin Neuman, virologist and head of the biology department at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, says he believes that patients are “being discharged with some virus still in them, and then the disease returns.”
This theory was also echoed by Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who said, “It’s possible that people could shed remnants of the virus for some period of time. That doesn’t mean anything is wrong with them or that they are contagious.”
