Aug. 30 (UPI) — A 25-year-old Nevada man appears to be the first documented case of COVID-19 reinfection in the United States, public health officials said, as the country inched closer to 6 million confirmed cases of the virus.
Researchers with the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory reported that a patient who tested positive with the virus in April, then tested negative twice afterwards and felt well for a month, was reinfected with the virus in May.
Researchers examined genetic material from specimens collected during both illnesses and found they were two genetically distinct iterations of the same virus.
The Nevada news follows reports this week that a 33-year-old Hong Kong man had coronavirus twice, with infections occurring 142 days apart.
At least 182,069 people have died from the novel coronavirus in the United States and at least 5,931,511 have been infected.
According to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker, as of Saturday afternoon 17,570 new cases and 269 new deaths had been reported since midnight.
In Texas, bar owners vowed to reopen in protest of Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order Saturday.
A Fort Worth, Texas-based bar owner organized an event Saturday called “Come and Take It,” where bars across the state would open in defiance of a shutdown order in effect since June 26.
Chris Polone, who owns the Rail Club in Fort Worth, said he expected about 1,000 bars across the state to participate in the event. A similar event, called Freedom Fest, took place about a month ago.
Last week, Texas health officials reported that more than 12,226 Texans have died from COVID-19 and more than 601,768 have been infected, with 3,972 new cases reported Friday.
On Friday, Kansas health officials said four Kansas State University sororities were the source of an outbreak in Riley County, which reported 136 new cases that day.
And the University of Alabama, which started classes Aug. 19, has reported 481 new COVID-19 cases since Aug. 25 — meaning more than a quarter of the 1,201 cases of the viruses logged by the University of Alabama system dashboard were reported this month.
Florida, which has been considered one of the hotspots for the virus for much of the summer, reported 3,197 new cases Saturday, with a 4.97% positivity rate. But the number of new infections in the state has remained stable for the past two weeks, with officials reporting fewer than 5,000 new cases of the virus for the 14th day in a row Saturday.
