{"id":1436,"date":"2021-06-16T08:57:41","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T12:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2021-06-16T08:57:41","modified_gmt":"2021-06-16T12:57:41","slug":"whats-the-risk-of-reinfection-with-a-variant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=1436","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s the risk of reinfection with a variant?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Question:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Building from yesterday&#8217;s question, given the rise of more transmissible variants, if I had COVID earlier in 2020, what&#8217;s the risk of reinfection with a variant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Answer:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>This is another area we&#8217;re still learning about.\u00a0 Individual-level risk varies dramatically based on a range of factors&#8211; including vaccination status, degree of exposure, strength of immune response, etc&#8211; so I can&#8217;t speak to your individual risk.\u00a0 Instead, I&#8217;ll focus on describing what the limited data currently tell us about population-level risk of reinfection.\u00a0 To keep the post manageable, I&#8217;ll also limit descriptions to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/coronavirus\/2019-ncov\/variants\/variant-info.html\">three variants of concern<\/a>\u00a0more frequent in the US::\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Alpha variant is unlikely to increase the risk of reinfection <\/strong>(B.1.1.7, originally detected in the UK). Last month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lanpub\/article\/PIIS2468-2667(21)00055-4\/fulltext\"><em>Lancet <\/em>published a study<\/a> examining the association between regional levels of infections with Alpha variant and\u00a0reported symptoms, disease course, rates of reinfection, and transmissibility. Study authors found that the frequency of reinfection with the Alpha variant was not meaningfully different from the frequency of reinfection with the pre-existing variants, concluding that &#8220;B.1.1.7 does not substantially alter the risk of reinfection.&#8221;<\/li><li><strong>Delta variant might not\u00a0increase\u00a0the risk of reinfection<\/strong>\u00a0(B.1.617 .2, originally detected in India).\u00a0 We\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2021.05.04.442663v1\">have evidence <\/a>that neutralizing antibodies from individuals who had previously been infected &#8220;neutralized B.1.617 about 50% less effectively than previously circulating strains,&#8221; as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-021-01274-7\">reported in <\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-021-01274-7\">Nature<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>This evidence does not bode well for the risk of reinfection, however, it&#8217;s also not enough evidence to make assumptions about increased risk of reinfection.\u00a0 In more positive news, <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.publishing.service.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/993879\/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_15.pdf\">data released last week<\/a> from the UK&#8217;s SIREN study indicate that the rate of reinfection with the Delta variant is no higher than pre-existing variants.\u00a0<\/li><li><strong>Gamma variant has been associated with increased risk of reinfection<\/strong>\u00a0(P.1, originally detected in Brazil).\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.medrxiv.org\/content\/10.1101\/2021.05.10.21256644v1\">Study results\u00a0<\/a>released last month of blood donors in Manaus, Brazil, found that the risk of reinfection with Gamma variant was higher than anticipated&#8211; 1 in 6 individuals previously infected were reinfected with Gamma. As described in this easy-to-read\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/373\/bmj.n1353\"><em>BMJ<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0on the study, these results\u00a0confirm &#8220;that P.1 is better at evading antibodies in those infected with an older variant, as has been suggested in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/372\/6544\/815?ijkey=f9694ff685b99117170165b85d09bf97bae07ce7&amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha\">laboratory studies<\/a>.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question:\u00a0Building from yesterday&#8217;s question, given the rise of more transmissible variants, if I had COVID earlier in 2020, what&#8217;s the risk of reinfection with a variant? Answer:\u00a0This is another area we&#8217;re still learning about.\u00a0 Individual-level risk varies dramatically based on a range of factors&#8211; including vaccination status, degree of exposure, strength of immune response, etc&#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[60],"tags":[203,172,190,209,204,183,167],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-risk","tag-alpha","tag-b-1-1-7","tag-b-1-617","tag-delta","tag-gamma","tag-p-1","tag-variant","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/June-16-2021.jpg?fit=1600%2C1009&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}