The number of people who get sick multiple times has gone up with the arrival of the Omicron variant. With the new rules, an increase in infections is possible from 1 April. What are the factors that increase the chances of recovering the coronavirus?
Getting sick of Covid is rare, but possible and the personal likelihood of it happening depends on many factors. Surely the reopening and the new rules in force since April can somehow favor a greater circulation of the virus, but it is not the only variable in play. It is easier to get sick again even if you have not been vaccinated, if you have been vaccinated for a long time and if you have been sick for months.
In addition, the circulation of one “new” variant compared to Omicron 1 (already “guilty” of causing the wave of SARS-CoV-2 greater than ever in numerical terms) facilitates reinfections: Omicron 2 (BA.2) is even more contagious and can make sick both those who have already had Omicron 1, and those who have already had other versions of the virus in the past (Delta and Alpha).
As of March 7 BA.2 in Italy was 44% (according to flash survey Istituto Superiore di Sanità), but it may already have become prevalent. Getting sick again is a rare occurrence, but it is there for all to see because so many people have been infected. It is a small possibility multiplied by the millions of people who have recently had Covid and it is very likely that everyone will be aware of such cases. Cases of people who returned positive 90 days after the first diagnosis. At a statistical level, the reinfections on the total number of reported cases are at 3.4% in the week 14-20 March (according to ISS data), a value defined as “stable”. However, they could be more considering that some positive people are not tracked, especially if they are asymptomatic.
In Great Britain the excellent monitoring system has estimated that the risk of reinfection from Omicron is 10 times higher compared to the one experienced with Delta.
How come this happens? The incredible contagiousness of Omicron (version BA.1 or BA.2) is the first facilitating cause, the others concern: how many doses of vaccine they are done, with which variant we are infected the first time (particular that in almost all cases it is not known), how our organism reacts, what other diseases we have.
Do vaccines protect us? Vaccines were designed to protect us from hospitalization and death and they do it well, but they were studied on a virus, the Chinese one from Wuhan, which no longer exists. The vaccines that are in use, therefore, they lose in effectiveness in blocking the transmission of the virus when it comes to Omicron, but they don’t completely lose it and not right away. Obviously, the more doses you take, the more you are protected (even from contagion) and the more recently you have immunization, the more the vaccine efficacy “holds”.
Pre-Omicron infections, however, result in poor immunization against Omicron. Who had made Covid with Deltaor in the first wave, if not vaccinated it would be found “Unguarded”.
Finally, as in all pathologies, each person makes his own story: they exist individuals more vulnerable to viruses, because the power of the immune response is genetically based and obviously each of us has a genetic background that is different. And there are also sick people in which the vaccines do not produce antibodies, or very few, the so-called “fragile” for which the fourth dose is being considered.
It should be remembered, however, that getting sick with Covid twice in a short amount of time is still quite unlikely, even with the latest version of Omicron, and for most people. the second infection usually occurs asymptomatically. Omicron was less serious than Delta and BA.2 seems to be even less lethal than Omicron 1 (also thanks to the recent infections that “shield” and the many people vaccinated three times), but above all, vaccines designed to save lives are successful to block well the expansion of the virus towards the lungs and, although they have not been studied for Omicron, they still manage to do this job well even after months and months.
March 31, 2022 (change March 31, 2022 | 18:42)
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