Are people who contract Covid several times more at risk of complications? If the symptoms of the disease were to be less severe over reinfections, experts warn of certain long-term health risks.
Covid-19 reinfections potentially lead to new risks of serious medical complications, hospitalization and death, this is what to remember from a new study revealed by the National Geographic site. These results come in then the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants, now dominant, should make reinfections more frequent.
Recent research has demonstrated that people who have been infected with Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant have produced abundant antibodies that enable them to later cope with this same subvariant and previously circulating variants.
But these antibodies proved ineffective in countering the variants that appeared later, such as BA.4, BA.2.12.1 or even BA.5, which is all the rage at the moment. There remains the unknown sub-variant BA.2.75, the last to appear and of which we know very little at the moment, and in particular about the reinfection capacities.
However, each new contamination transmits a risk of complications, increasing the risk of hospitalization, death and long Covid, according to preliminary data from a study carried out on patients treated by the care service of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
COVID-19 reinfections may increase the likelihood of new health problems https://t.co/FcvA68JB79 “chest pain, abnormal heart rhythms, heart attacks, inflammation of heart.., heart failure & blood clots…shortness of breath, low blood oxygen, lung disease,..fluid around the lungs”
— Cynthia, VT (@clhvelo) July 7, 2022
What is certain, reinfections generally induce less severe symptoms than the first infection. But as the National Geographic site points out, a large study that has not yet been peer-reviewed warns of the risks associated with multiple reinfections. This study indicates that each reinfection increases the risk of mortality, hospitalization and pulmonary, cardiovascular, renal, neurological, gastrointestinal and psychiatric sequelae, in particular.
As the study only involved American veterans (the vast majority of them elderly men), these conclusions probably do not apply to the general population, but are mainly aimed at the elderly, immunocompromised and with health problems. pre-existing. These new scientific elements, which have yet to be confirmed by their peers, nevertheless encourage caution and take measures to avoid being reinfected.