Catching COVID Again

In the early days of the pandemic, it was extremely rare to hear of people catching Covid twice.  That's not the case anymore, especially since the Omicron variant emerged in late November 2021.

Why are more people catching Covid again?
Part of it is Omicron itself - a variant that's better at sneaking past defenses built on old infections.

Part of it is a numbers game. So many of us have already been infected at some point, that a rising proportion of new infections are a second bout.

But getting Covid twice in a short space of time is still pretty unlikely, even with the latest version of Omicron which is widespread in the UK.  And for most people a second infection is less likely to make them very ill.

How likely are you to catch Covid twice?
Eventually, pretty likely - immunity fades and coronaviruses evolve.  Most people can expect to catch the other coronaviruses, such as those which cause common cold symptoms, many times in their life.

IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

But early in the pandemic, that didn't seem to be the case with Covid.  Fewer than 1% of all cases recorded in the UK before November 2021 were labeled as reinfections.  But then Omicron took over. This looks very different to the versions of coronavirus that we saw before.  Its differences give it a better chance of sneaking past the body's early defenses, which were based on exposure to previous Covid infections.

And so the rates of reinfection have been about 10 times higher this year compared with rates seen earlier in the pandemic.  READ MORE...