UP to 14 per cent of patients who had recovered from coronavirus in China tested positive again raising immunity fears.
This comes as China celebrated that it had beaten the virus and was beginning to reopen workplaces for its citizens.
There are fears that a second wave of cases may be arising from people returning from other countries as lockdown measures are being lifted by the Chinese government.
New research from doctors on the frontline of the outbreak in Wuhan - where the virus originated - reported that between three and 10 per cent of cured patients tested positive again.
Tongji Hospital, which identified the first Covid-19 case, confirmed that five out of 145 patients; a little over three per cent tested positive again during tests, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
However, the five patients who had tested positive again did not have any symptoms and none of their close contacts had been infected.
Wang Wei, the hospital’s president, said: “So far there is no evidence to suggest that they are infectious."
“These are just small samples” and “not enough to assure us of the validity of our initial findings." He affirmed.
Meanwhile, other quarantine facilities in Wuhan have seen about 5 to 10 per cent of their recovered patients test positive again.
The findings were reported by the health news outlet Life Times, which is affiliated with state-run newspaper People’s Daily.
An earlier study, from southern China's Guangdong Province, found that as many as 14 per cent of those who had recovered tested positive again in later check-ups.
Experts believed the patients were still recovering from lung infections and have yet to be fully healthy.
Cai Weiping, director of the Infectious Diseases Division of the No.8 People's Hospital, told Caixin 13 discharged patients had tested positive again.
He said the positive results in the recovered patients were found in anal swabs - a method rarely used in other parts of the country.
National treatment guidelines only require test from the throat or nose for suspected coronavirus patients.
But research by Guangzhou Medical University found the virus in faecal samples - suggesting a new path of transmission, some hospitals in the province have since adopted the anal swab in virus tests.
The coronavirus outbreak has now killed more than 26,939 across the globe, including 3,297 in China, with over 590,038 infected.
It comes as the US has now overtaken China for the number for the number of infections, with nearly 100,392.
There have been 1,543 deaths in America, almost a quarter of them in New York City, where hospitals are overwhelmed.
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