![]() ![]() Knowing this, one solution to fighting all these reinfections, Sigal says, is to design a better vaccine. Previous work that has attempted to answer this question leans towards the latter theory. However, we don’t quite know whether these repeat infections are due to the fact that the initial infection gives us immunity that wanes posthaste, or if the viruses themselves evolve to outsmart our previously built immunological weaponry. We all come down with a coronavirus infection about every three years sometimes even multiple times within the same year. This could be a sign that the virus is beginning to mimic the natural rhythms of other coronaviruses, which infect and reinfect us many times in our lifetimes. He and his team found that an infection with the original BA.1 version of Omicron offered little immune protection against the newer versions of Omicron, BA.4. Similarly, Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa, has found a comparable pattern in his own research, which is also still in preprint. Some of those in the study were reinfected as quickly as 20 days after their initial infection, which, the authors write, calls into question just how suitable it is to use a minimum 60-day gap for classifying a case as a reinfection. A February preprint from researchers in Denmark suggests that the BA.2 sublineage of Omicron can reinfect people shortly after they’ve had the original BA.1 form, but the paper did conclude that such reinfections are rare. But the virus is still changing, so even if you’ve had Omicron, that doesn’t mean you won’t catch Covid again-and you can even get reinfected with the different manifestations of Omicron. It’s the sheer difference between Omicron and earlier variants that explains why the risk of reinfection has shot up. ![]() Reinfections, he says, “are becoming an accepted reality.” ![]() Post-Omicron that number dropped to about 50 percent. In a study published in March, he found that pre-Omicron, the effectiveness of a Covid infection against a reinfection hovered at about 90 percent-in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Abu-Raddad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, has investigated how much a previous infection protects against a future one-and how much this has shifted because of Omicron. Another paper from Imperial College London published in December 2021 found that Omicron was five times more likely to reinfect people than the previously dominant Delta variant. According to data from the UK, the risk of being reinfected with Covid-19 was about eight times higher after Omicron became the reigning variant in the country compared with when Delta held the crown. Other studies have shown just how much Omicron has changed the reinfection calculation. Reinfection, Pulliam believes, is going to be a normal part of the way we live in the future. “If what’s going on in South Africa is any indication, it’s that probably people are going to be reinfected over the course of years,” she says. South Africa, Pulliam says, is uniquely placed to study reinfection, serving as a barometer for the rest of the world’s reinfection future, given that Omicron has already made its way through most of the population.
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