How soon can you catch Covid again?

A 31-year-old Spaniard has contracted Covid twice in 20 days, the shortest documented gap between infections, scientists said.

The healthcare worker was infected with the Delta variant, followed by the omicron strain of the virus in less than three weeks. Researchers say the case shows that even vaccinated people who have recently had Covid-19 “cannot be confident that they will be protected from reinfection”.

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The woman, whose name was not released publicly, was “fully vaccinated and had received a booster shot 12 days earlier,” she said The guard. She tested positive in a workplace PCR personal screening test on December 20, 2021. She “developed no symptoms and was self-isolating for 10 days before returning to work”.

Then, on January 10, 2022, “she developed a cough, fever, and general malaise and took another PCR test,” which again came back positive.

Whole genome sequencing showed that the patient was “infected by two different Covid variants,” the paper said. The healthcare worker had first been infected with the Delta variant before then contracting the Omicron virus “which is known to be more contagious and may evade immunity from previous infections and vaccinations.”

dr Gemma Recio, from the Institut Català de la Salut in Tarragona and one of the authors of the study, said: “This case underscores the potential of the Omicron variant to evade previous immunity acquired either through natural infection with other variants or through vaccines . ”

She added that using genome sequencing “will help identify variants with the ability to partially evade the immune response.”

The case, set to be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Portugal, is considered “the shortest known gap between infections,” he said Sky news.

How quickly can you get infected again with Covid-19?

Previously in the UK if you have tested positive for a variant of Covid-19 Over a 90-day period, it was “considered part of the same trapping episode,” he said i news Side? site. Positive test weeks after an initial positive test are likely to be due to the “residual effects of the initial infection”, while tests outside the 90-day period were counted as a reinfection.

But with Omicron now being the dominant variant, those infected with other variants such as Alpha, Beta and Delta are at risk of reinfection as Omicron is better at evading immunity from previous infections. A study published in December by World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College London found that Omicron is “five times more likely to reinfect humans than Delta.”

However, it is “possible” that previous infection with Omicron makes reinfection less likely, “especially so quickly” after an initial infection, The Guardian said.

“Especially in winter, we can expect further waves of infection without new variants,” said Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, the newspaper.

“Fortunately, there is evidence that immunity to serious disease is more robust than immunity to infection. So while reinfections will continue for many years to come, over time we will see less and less serious illness and death.”

https://www.theweek.co.uk/covid-19/956491/how-quickly-can-you-catch-covid-again How soon can you catch Covid again?