Increasingly, however, more people appear to be contracting the virus multiple times in relatively quick succession, as another omicron subvariant sweeps through the U.S.
The BA.5 variant is now the most dominant strain of COVID-19 in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while it’s hard to get an exact count — given how many people are taking rapid tests at home — there are indications that both reinfections and hospitalizations are increasing.
For example: Some 31,000 people across the U.S. are currently hospitalized with the virus, with admissions up 4.5% compared to a week ago. And data from New York state shows that reinfections started trending upwards again in late June.
Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says BA.5 is highly transmissible and manages to at least partially sidestep some of the immunity people may have from prior infections and vaccinations.
“Not only is it more infectious, but your prior immunity doesn’t count for as much as it used to,” he explains. “And that means that the old saying that, ‘I just had COVID a month ago, and so I have COVID immunity superpowers, I’m not going to get it again’ — that no longer holds.”
So just how worried should you be, especially if you’re vaccinated and taking precautions like wearing masks in crowds? Here’s what some public health experts make of the latest surge.
Is BA.5 more dangerous?
So far there is no evidence that this variant causes more serious illness. And infectious disease experts say that even though new infections are on the rise, the impact of BA.5 is unlikely to be on the scale of the surge we saw last winter — in part because the country is better equipped to manage it.
The U.S. is averaging about 300 deaths a day, compared to 3,000 last winter. Dr. Anna Durbin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says the combination of prior infections and vaccinations is still protective, and COVID-19 treatments are better.
She adds that new booster shots specifically targeting omicron — which could roll out as soon as this fall — should also be helpful in preventing serious illness and deaths.
Are there long-term consequences for people who get COVID-19 multiple times?
Findings of a pre-print study published in June suggest that people who get sick multiple times may have a higher risk of long-COVID symptoms.
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at thousands of cases of reinfection and saw a wide range of problems in the months that followed: certain respiratory conditions, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, brain fog and other conditions including metabolic disease, cardiac disease, kidney disease and diabetes.
“Altogether, we concluded that reinfection contributes to additional risk,” Al-Aly says. “So even if you’re vaccinated … it’s absolutely best to avoid reinfection.”
And a study published last week in the journal Cell concludes that repeat infections are likely.
Researchers studied blood samples from people who had been vaccinated and boosted, and they found they had a reduced ability to neutralize the BA.5 virus, compared to prior sub-variants, BA.1 and BA.2.
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