Doctors in China working with victims of the coronavirus (COVID-19) are now reporting that people who recovered are getting re-infected, and some are dying from sudden heart failure. Are these things true, and if so, what are the percentage risks?

Both these things are true, unfortunately. This will greatly complicate the ability to keep this infection under control and certainly will make it much, much, harder to eradicate. In most cases with epidemics, those who survive an infection can go about their routine lives and even interact freely with people newly infected and not be at risk. So surviving caregivers can return to the fray, working in hospitals and clinics, for example, doing home visits, and be fearless knowing they are impervious to harm. That is not the case with this new coronavirus, and in fact, the second bout of infection may have worse consequences than the initial illness. This is a particularly insidious consequence of re‑infection, that it will be more severe and will have a tendency to create cardiac complications, and this could be on the order of 10% of those with a second round of illness. So, in other words, the mortality figures are higher with reinfection rather than lower, contrary to what usually happens, that a secondary bout of microbial illness will be less severe because prior exposure will confer some immunity, if not total. That is not the case with this virus.