Multiple infections are increasing as the pandemic rumbles and the virus mutates into new strains, the effects of reinfection on long-term fitness are unclear.
The US researchers said their new study published in the journal Nature Medicine was the first to read about how reinfection increases the risk of health problems in acute and prolonged cases of covid.
Researchers analyzed the anonymized medical records of another 5. 8 million people in the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ national health care database. U. S.
More than 443,000 more people tested positive for covid at least once between March 1, 2020 and April of this year.
Almost 41,000 of this organization have had Covid more than once. More than 93% had a total of two infections, while 6% had 3 and only about 1% had four.
The remaining 5. 3 million never Covid.
When the researchers analyzed the fitness results of other groups, they found that “people who have been reinfected have a greater threat of all sorts of unwanted fitness problems,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington in St. Louis and leader of the study. author, told AFP.
According to the study, people with repeated infections were twice as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized due to illness as those who had not been reinfected.
Heart and lung disease were more than three times as common in other people who had been reinfected.
Reinfection contributes to brain conditions, kidney disease and diabetes, according to the study.
And the threat of such disorders could simply pile up with an infection, he suggested.
Al-Aly warned that this means continued reinfections “would likely increase the burden of disease in the population. “
Before a feared Covid surge in the holiday season, he asked other people to wear masks to protect themselves.
He also suggested the government do more to save it from the flow of Covid.
“The explanation for why reinfection exists is that our existing vaccine strategy does not block transmission,” he said. “I think reinfections will continue until we have vaccines that block transmission, offer longer-lasting coverage and are variant-proof. “
The authors said the limitations of the study included the fact that most of the veteran participants were older white men.
When the study was published as a preprint in June, US expert Eric Topol described the findings as “concerning”.
In a Substack article, Topol noted that reinfections are “much more common” after April, when the era of testing ended, due to new, more transmissible variants of Omicron.
In more positive news, earlier this week, Al-Aly published a pre-printed study, which has not been peer-reviewed, which found that other people who took Pfizer’s Paxlovid drug within five days of testing positive had a lower risk of contracting a long Covid.
(AFP)