By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter

A two-year-old baby girl in the southeastern city of Gimhae has been diagnosed as suffering from influenza A (H1N1) for a second time, health authorities here said Thursday. This is the first reported case in Korea of a person being infected with the virus twice.

Tests for the virus were positive, two months after she first caught the flu in September.

The girl was previously hospitalized when her temperature reached 38.3 degrees Celsius and after the Green Cross Reference Laboratory confirmed that she tested positive for H1N1. She was sent home after recovering.

However, the baby recently began to suffer from respiratory-related ailments and had a recorded temperature of 39.1 degrees on Nov. 19 ― symptoms associated with a new strain of the flu ― and was confirmed to have been re-infected.

Usually, a person who tests positive for the flu develops immunity to the virus and requires no vaccination for future protection.

Experts were skeptical about a re-infection and asked a state-run health center in Gimhae to check their results, despite the tests being positive.

Health authorities said that samples from the baby will be sent to the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention to screen whether it is a mutated strain of the new flu, noting that there was a possibility of a misdiagnosis in the initial tests two months ago.

Also, there is the possibility that the girl's immune system was not mature enough to build up immunity after the first infection.

In the United States, Debra Parsons, a pediatrician in West Virginia, caught H1N1 flu twice. She suffered from symptoms in August and again in October, with the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention making a definitive diagnosis in both cases.

chungay@koreatimes.co.kr