Nebraska Family Contracts Coronavirus Again, Symptoms Worse

The Conboy family fought off the novel coronavirus in early November. Now they are battling it all over again.

Chuck Conboy Sr., 67, was on his way to a “holiday lights festival” in November, when he first realized something was wrong. “I walked about 200 feet, and I couldn’t breathe. And I mean, it was a panic feeling. I’ve never had anything like that in my life,” he said. When the family was tested for COVID-19, the results were positive. Fortunately, all four members of his family survived.

Now, months after their victory, they are once again fighting the global pandemic. “I woke up… and had a fever. It jumped up to like 102 degrees, which for me, that’s high. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, not again,’” Conboy said. And the second time around, the suffering has increased. “It just hit me like a truck, and this time, it knocked me down,” Conboy explained. “In fact, this is the first day – day nine – that I’m back to halfway normal. If you’d asked me yesterday, I didn’t even know where I was.”

As Nebraska continues to lift its emergency pandemic restrictions, his wife and sons have also tested positive a second time. And this time, the symptoms were significantly more aggressive. “As far as the symptoms, they were much more severe, quickly setting. Taste and smell disappeared immediately,” he said. “Temperature shot up higher just immediately, and this was not just me. This was the entire family.”

Nebraska Medicine’s Dr. Mark Rupp said such cases are rare, but not unheard of. Rupp told a CNN source some people may only develop a temporary immunity. “That may be one of the explanations: that people with very mild disease don’t mount as vigorous an immunological response and don’t have as long-lasting a response,” he said.