Russian scientist deliberately contracted coronavirus just for research

A Russian scientist who deliberately infected himself with coronavirus in an experiment to become ill for a second time says the hopes for herd immunity are exaggerated.

Dr Alexander Chepurnov, 69, was on a skiing trip to France in February this year when he got infected. He did not require hospitalisation and recovered after coming back home in Siberia.

His exposure to coronavirus, however prompted Chepurnov and his team of researchers at the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Novosibirsk to start a study on the virus’ antibodies.

The professor and his team found that the antibodies decrease rapidly in the body. His team, who mostly researched on the antibody behaviour and their longevity inside the body, found that almost 3 months after he was first infected, the antibodies were no longer being detected.

“By the end of the third month from the moment I felt sick, the antibodies were no longer detected. So I decided to examine the probability of reinfection,” Chepurnov was quoted as saying.

He then decided to do something dangerous, become a human guinea pig for the experiment and thus exposed himself knowingly to Covid-positive patients.

Chepurnov said his body’s defence mechanism fell exactly six months after he was infected the first time and the infection was severe the second time when he caught it and he had to be hospitalised, the first sign of which was a sore throat.

“For five days, my temperature remained above 39C or 102 F. I lost my sense of smell, taste. On the sixth day of the illness, the CT scan of the lungs was clear, and three days after the scan, the X-ray showed double pneumonia,” Chepurnov was quoted as saying.