The only silver lining to coming down with a case of COVID-19 was that you wouldn't catch it again for a while.
As another omicron subvariant sweeps through the U.S., more people seem to be contracting the virus multiple times.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most dominant strain of COVID-19 is the BA.5 variant. It's not easy to get an exact count of how many people are taking rapid tests at home.
There are 31,000 people hospitalized in the U.S. with the virus, with admissions up 4.5% compared to a week ago. According to data from New York state, re infections started to go upwards in June.
Dr. Bob Wachter is the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
He says that your prior immunity doesn't count as much as it used to. "That means that the old saw that, 'I just had Covid a month ago, and I'm not going to get it again', that no longer holds."
If you're taking precautions like wearing masks, how worried should you be? Some public health experts made a statement about the surge.
There is no proof that this variant causes more serious illnesses. The impact of BA.5 is unlikely to be on the scale of the surge we saw last winter because the country is better equipped to manage it.
300 deaths a day is the average for the U.S. The combination of prior infections and vaccinations is still protective, according to a professor at the school.
She says that most people have some immunity that is helpful. There are antivirals in our house. We are not seeing a rise in deaths because of that. That is very comforting. It tells me that even the BA.5 virus is not so different from the other ones.
New booster shots specifically targeting omicron should help in preventing serious illness and deaths.
Findings of a pre-print study published in June suggest that people who get sick multiple times are more likely to have long-COVID symptoms.
A clinical epidemiologist at Washington University looked at thousands of cases of reinfection and found a wide range of problems in the months that followed.
Reinfection contributes to additional risk. Even if you'revaccinated, it's best to avoid re-infection.
The study was published in the journal Cell.
Researchers studied blood samples from people who had been injected and found they had a reduced ability to destroy the BA.5 virus.
Blood from people who had breakthrough infections from BA.1 showed reduced neutralization, suggesting that repeat Omicron infections are likely in the population.
There are ways to reduce your exposure to the virus. This is how to increase your mask game.
Children under the age of 5 are now eligible to get vaccine, and public health experts are encouraging parents not to wait any longer. Adults over the age of 50 can get a second booster shot.
If you are going to travel or attend a gathering this summer, you should check out these tips for protecting yourself outdoors, improving indoor air quality and what to do if you get sick.
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