NYT Reinfections are becoming more common. Experts are still unsure about how damaging they can be.
Doctors and scientists who study Covid-19 agree that for most people, getting infected for a second — or third or fourth — time is basically inevitable. The longer the virus sticks around, the more common repeat infections have and will become, especially in light of the summer uptick and a new dominant variant.
There is no risk-free Covid infection. But researchers are trying to untangle just how damaging repeated infections might be — whether symptoms tend to become more or less severe from one bout to the next, and whether one’s risk of developing long Covid increases after multiple illnesses.
There is a dearth of data on Covid outcomes, including what proportion of people with repeat infections go on to develop longer-term complications, said Dr. Marc Sala, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center. But here’s what we know so far.
The severity of repeat infections
For many people who get Covid multiple times, subsequent infections will be as mild as or milder than their first, emerging data shows, likely because of partial immunity from previous infections, vaccination and the fact that the latest circulating variants generally cause less severe symptoms. There are a few exceptions — notably, among some people who are immunocompromised, older or had particularly severe previous infections. People who had a severe first infection are more likely to end up hospitalized or to require medical attention for a reinfection, said Emily Hadley, a research data scientist at RTI International who studies long Covid.