A SCIENTIST who says he infected himself with coronavirus TWICE has warned of a “wave of mass reinfections” and claimed vaccines might not stop people falling ill.
Prof Alexander Chepurnov, 69, caught Covid-19 for the first time in February – then claimed he deliberately got it again to test if he still had antibodies.
Now the senior virologist has demanded an urgent study of people catching it twice and accused Russian authorities of not taking the risk seriously.
He hit back at medical chief Anna Popova for “closing her eyes” to the issue of reinfections in the country amid rising anecdotal reports of such cases.
“This is an incredibly important issue, and we must investigate it,” said Prof Chepurnov, senior researcher at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Novosibirsk.
“I might be completely wrong, and these were indeed just (a few) individual cases.
“Or possibly I am right, and we are about to face a wave of mass reinfections.”
He hit back at Dr Popova’s insistence there were no second infections in Russia and that his claims to have caught it twice were fake.
“Alexander Chepurnov is an elderly man, and I can only pass him my wishes for good health,” she said.
“To expose himself to patients while not wearing a mask is anyway nonsense for a doctor, regardless of whether he was sick in the past or not.
“We have investigated this situation and were unable to find evidence that this was actually a reinfection.”
INFECTED TWICE
He has since insisted he has documentary evidence of his first and second infections.
“I am afraid that Anna Popova is mistaken,” he said.
Russia’s health minister Mikhail Murashko also contradicted Dr Popova to say that there had been reinfection cases.
Prof Chepurnov, who says he first caught coronavirus on a skiing holiday in Italy, became famous in Russia when he used himself as a guinea pig.
He said his personal experiment showed he had antibodies for three months after his first infection, after which they reduced.
He then deliberately exposed himself to Covid patients while not wearing protective gear – and caught it again.
The second bout was worse and he ended up in hospital with double pneumonia, but has since recovered, he said.
The experiment led him to conclude hopes of “herd immunity” in a population are “overblown” and even that vaccines relying on antibodies might only work for a few months.
