Yes. It's like the common cold in that way - once you've beaten a strain of the common cold, you'll never come down with that strain of the cold again (unless you become severely immunocompromised). But most of us have had more than one cold in our lifetimes because new strains arise rapidly...like
every year rapidly.
A recent paper by Chinese researchers asserts that there are two strains of this new coronavirus, an "S" strain and an "L" strain. They seem to think that you can get infected by both strains at the same time:
"A controversial research paper claims the new coronavirus has split into two distinct strains and that it is possible to be infected with both, but some experts are unconvinced." March 5, 2020
Coronavirus researchers claim virus has split into two strains, but many experts disagree
It's still unclear if a patient can catch one strain, beat it, and then catch the second strain. Or if patients will have a higher mortality rate if they become infected with both strains. And that's a hugely important question. But we can't answer these questions yet - typically one paper does not a scientific fact make; lots of individual papers have been wrong in the long march of science, and some experts have been grousing about the quality of that research paper.
So all we can say at the moment is that there
might be effectively two strains of this virus, and that
might be significant.
But here's a worrying thing: the more people this virus infects, the higher the chances that it will mutate enough that the body's immune response to one strain won't work against the new strain. And, like the common cold, there's a very good chance that this will indeed happen over time, and we could see an entirely new strain of this thing every year, just like the common cold....except more deadly.
