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Q&A These are the symptoms of omicron
The risk of reinfection exists, and it is not negligible.
According to the latest report from the Italian
Higher Institute of Health
, reinfections between August 24 and January 9 represented 2.7% of cases (more than 108,000), and in the last week they have increased to 3.2% , compared to around 1% registered between October and early December.
Recall that the omicron variant was isolated on November 11.
Data compiled by
Imperial College London
show that with the new variant, infection after recovery is five times more frequent than with
Delta
.
Therefore, the protection offered by a previous infection would have been reduced against
omicron
to 19% compared to 85% calculated with other variants.
Who is most at risk of being reinfected?
Unvaccinated and healthy: according to the Italian health report, there have been 21,000 cases of reinfection in unimmunized people between mid-December and mid-January, 2,800 cases among those vaccinated with at least one dose at the time of first diagnosis and 65,000 among those who received the vaccine after the first infection.
Among health workers there were more than 4,000 reinfections in one month, compared to 37,000 first diagnoses (in the rest of the population, the ISS calculated 72,000 reinfections compared to two million first diagnoses).
By age groups, people between 20 and 39 years old accounted for 39% of all reinfections, followed by those between 40 and 59 years old (34%).
How much time can pass between the first and the second infection?
The Ministry of Health defines a "reinfection case" as a person who contracts the
coronavirus
at least 90 days after the previous illness, or less than 90 days but with a different viral strain.
Do you have milder symptoms in a reinfection?
We know that
omicron
is related to partial immune evasion, as far as infection is concerned.
This means that those recovered and vaccinated are less protected from contagion.
"However, we have very strong data showing how
T cells
, which govern immunological memory, remain active even against the new variant and prevent severe forms of disease," explains
Mario Clerici
, Full Professor of Immunology at the
University of Milan
and scientific director of the
Don Gnocchi Foundation
.
"This explains why today, despite the very high number of infections, the proportion of hospitalized patients, even in intensive care, does not reach alarming levels."
Could those recovered from omicron be infected with the same variant?
This is unlikely, because during an infection the body mounts an immune response specifically directed against the responsible virus.
Therefore, we can assume, except in very frail or immunosuppressed subjects, that being infected several times with the same strain is very rare.
"We must bear in mind that
delta
and
omicron
currently coexist", stresses Clerici, "the former may be decreasing in percentage terms, but it has not disappeared. Curing one of the two variants may not protect against the other. Getting vaccinated is more important than ever, because it saves us from
serious
Covid
".
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