Scientists claim people cannot be infected with COVID-19 twice

Many reported cases of coronavirus patients relapsing after overcoming the disease were actually due to testing failures, South Korean scientists say.

Researchers at the South Korean center for disease control and prevention (CDC) now say the COVID-19 virus can't reactivate in human bodies, Report says citing Sky News.

There have been more than 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea, with 245 deaths - a 2.3% fatality rate, which is lower than the 3.4% average, as stated by the World Health Organisation.

A total of 277 patients in the country were believed to have fallen ill for a second time, as had patients in China and Japan.

This prompted concerns that the virus could be mutating so quickly that people were not necessarily immune to catching it again.

South Korea's CDC has found that the test results for the suspected relapsed patients were false positives. They warned the test it used was not able to distinguish between live traces of the virus and the harmless dead samples which remain after patients have recovered.

In the future, coronavirus could mutate and infect people who have previously overcome it, similarly to the flu.