Can a person be infected with Omicron twice? Here’s what the experts have to say

New Delhi: Indian health experts said here on Monday that while Omicron is known to cause re-infection of Kovid, there is no strong evidence to support that a person is being affected by the vaccine again. However, he did not rule out any such possibility.

A person’s immunity that has resulted from prior infection or vaccination has memory of the original virus.

But because Omicron is a divergence, meaning it has diverged significantly from its original COVID strain, it has several dissimilarities.

As a result, “our immune system fails to recognize the virus as the original virus and therefore there is a possibility of re-infection. In addition to the above, the weakened immunity over time of naturally infected individuals also results in re-infection.” Dr. Deepu TS, Associate Professor, Department of Infectious Diseases, Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS.

Although there are re-infections, there is “not yet strong evidence in favor” of recurrence of omicrons in a person, said Dr Ashok Mahashoor, Consultant Chest Physician at PD Hinduja Hospital and MRC, Mahim, Mumbai.

A recent study led by Imperial College London, UK, showed that the risk of re-infection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times higher than with the delta variant.

“This means that protection against re-infection by Omicron from a previous infection could be as low as 19 percent,” the researchers said.

Dr. Rahul Pandit, Director of Critical Care, Fortis Hospitals Mumbai, said, “Omicron causes re-infection because it has an ‘immune escape event’ – this means that people who had previously had an infection and had antibodies , or those who have been vaccinated and have antibodies, or both, is known as ‘hybrid immunity'”.

Omicron has more than 30 mutations on its spike protein, which help it evade immunity. So it is also infecting people who had antibodies earlier.

“However, there is no understanding whether these people will recur or not, it remains to be studied and seen,” Pandit, a member of the National and Maharashtra’s Kovid-19 Taskforce, told IANS.

“We should not predict whether such reinfection will occur. I have not seen a case in which a patient with Omicron has been re-infected with Omicron infection, nor in medical journals and medicine. have been reported anywhere in the literature yet,” he said.

But, some Western experts have argued that Omicron could happen again.

“Yes, you can get twice as many Omicrons,” Rutgers New Jersey Medical School professor Stanley Weiss said in a media report.

William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said in the report, “While the data specifically about Omron is still emerging, there is no reason to think that Omron is different from previous variants in this respect. “

However, Kingston Mills, professor of experimental immunology at Trinity College Dublin, said it was “too early” for people to be infected with the virus and caught again. Mills is quoted as saying by the Financial Times that the picture could be clear in six months’ time.

Mahashoor said that there have been cases of re-infection of Kovid in India, especially among people with low immunity.

“The best way to prevent this is to follow a covid appropriate behavior. Because there is no way to know whether the virus is there or not. The virus may be there, but the patient may be asymptomatic, so the best way to prevent it is Taking vaccines, wearing masks, washing hands properly and avoiding crowded places,” Mahashoor told IANS.

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