A new study published by researchers from the University of Washington in St. Louis and the American VA Organization Hospital in St. Louis, raises alarming findings about the effect of recurrent infections in Corona. Compared to the possible assessment that most of the damage caused by the virus will be caused by the first infection and that re-infections will be relatively mild, this study indicates a cumulative negative effect of re-infections on the overall health of the infected.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but previous studies by the same team of researchers, Dr. Ziad al-Ali and Yan Xia, that linked corona infection to an increased risk of diabetes have been published in leading journals.
The study examined the medical records of 257,000 people who were infected in Corona, about 38,000 people who were infected twice, and a group of 5.3 million people who were not infected at all, six months after the infection. That is, in this study at least one of the infections of the infected twice occurred probably before the age of the omicron. According to the study, in the same six months after infection, the group that was infected twice had more deaths, more hospitalizations, more breathing problems, more heart problems, more diabetes, and a variety of other symptoms.
The difference between non-infected and non-infected was most noticeable, but according to the researchers the effect of re-infection added a “non-trivial” risk. The excess effect of recurrent infections, appeared in both immunized and unvaccinated.
The researchers note that perhaps the health damage caused by the first infection is what makes patients more susceptible to the second infection.
This study – if confirmed in other similar studies – could lead to a change in attitude towards how to deal with the corona. The perception now is that the world is dealing with the corona through vaccines that prevent most cases of the morbidity, thus gradually creating a herd immunity, which protects recoverers from serious morbidity in subsequent variants. According to this approach, recurrent infections are not a problem for the majority of the population with the situation different of course for risk groups.
However, if re-infections do indeed gradually deteriorate health, then the approach should be different, for example: more emphasis on vaccines that prevent infection (and not just a serious illness), and a rapid update of vaccines to new variants; Rapid research to understand the mechanisms by which infection in the corona causes damage and the development of drugs that can intervene and prevent this damage, and increased vigilance against the virus even among those who have already been infected.
30% recurrent infections in children
In Israel today, the recurrent infections constitute tens of percent of the infections that have been officially confirmed. According to the Corona Dashboard, among 5-11 year olds, nearly 30% of the tests in the past month were of children who had already been ill in the past. The rate of recurrent infections out of all infections decreases with age, possibly in parallel with an increase in the immunization rate. Among those aged 30-50, about 15% of infections are recurrent, and among those aged 70 and over it is about 5%. This trend became very strong with the advent of the Ba, 5 variant, which infects both recovering from Ba.1 and Ba.2 omicrons as well as recovering from previous strains.