{"id":719,"date":"2020-03-19T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T18:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=719"},"modified":"2020-11-09T18:34:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T18:34:23","slug":"can-you-catch-coronavirus-more-than-once-and-would-you-explain-the-threat-that-covid-19-poses-to-immunodeficient-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"Can you catch coronavirus more than once? AND Would you explain the threat that covid-19 poses to immunodeficient communities?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Question:<\/strong> Can you catch coronavirus more than once or are you permanently immune like after measles or something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer:<\/strong> Short answer: We aren\u2019t sure. Longer answer: We currently know that COVID-19 can stay circulating in a person for several weeks after recovery (see Q&A from 3\/9). Good news:<\/em><\/strong> Some epidemiologists think<\/a> this may be beneficial for longer-term protection since it gives your body\u2019s immune system a longer time to build effective antibodies; There was a really small study of Macaques and reinfection<\/a> released on March 14 that has not yet been peer reviewed and is not necessarily applicable to humans, which shows that over a short time, Macaques were not able to be reinfected with COVID-19. Bad news: <\/em><\/strong>We also know that viruses mutate (see Q&A from 3\/11), which may create a different strain that a body\u2019s immune system will have to mount a new response to. And we know that a person stays immune to another type of coronavirus \u2014 the common cold \u2014 for only 1\u20132 years<\/a> after getting it. Finally, scientists are also hypothesizing that there is a dose-response relationship with COVID-19 \u2014 the more a person is exposed, the more severe the disease \u2014 scientists observed this phenomena <\/a>with SARS. In summation: <\/em><\/strong>It seems there may be degrees of \u201ccatching COVID-19\u201d (bad news especially for health care workers), that once you catch it, the virus may not be fully gone even when you are recovered, and our longer-term immune response is still unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question:<\/strong> Would you explain the threat that covid-19 poses to immunodeficient communities? And how that can impact our society as whole as well? Personally, I have a lot of loved ones with other health conditions, everything from asthma, to Crohn\u2019s disease to transplant recipients on immunosuppressants. A lot of them are \u201cyoung\u201d and otherwise \u201chealthy\u201d people, but it is still scary to think about what would happen if one of them became ill with covid-19. And from my understanding, people with other health conditions are no small percentage of our population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer:<\/strong> Per most of my answers, we have limited data about COVID-19 since it\u2019s new and our knowledge is still growing. But, we can explore this good question with existing information. First, let\u2019s look at the proportion of adults who are immunocompromised in the United States. I\u2019ve copied herein a table from a 2016 research letter in JAMA<\/a> that explores prevalence of immunosuppression among US adults. What we see is that among those 18\u201339, the prevalence is 1.6%, which is the equivalent of about 1.5 million Americans ages 18\u201339. Based on existing knowledge, we would expect an immunocompromised person to have more serious complications of a respiratory disease like COVID-19 as they have a weakened immune system that just isn\u2019t as well equipped to fight against the \u201cintruder\u201d. Research on other types of respiratory infections<\/a> \u2014 here, influenza \u2014 shows that \u201cImmunocompromised patients with influenza had more severe disease\/complications, longer viral shedding, and more antiviral resistance while demonstrating less clinical symptoms and signs on clinical assessment.\u201d So, not only would we hypothesize that immonocompromised individuals would have more serious complications of COVID-19, we might also hypothesize that they are at increased risk of transmitting COVID-19 to others. For more on how the immune system works, check out this good article from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/a>. CDC has also recently issued COVID-19 guidelines for people living with Asthma<\/a> and people living with HIV<\/a>, and has offered guidance to healthcare providers<\/a> on how to handle immunocompromised patients. In short, even if you are young, if you are immunocompromised, please take additional precaution to protect yourself from COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Question: Can you catch coronavirus more than once or are you permanently immune like after measles or something? Answer: Short answer: We aren\u2019t sure. Longer answer: We currently know that COVID-19 can stay circulating in a person for several weeks after recovery (see Q&A from 3\/9). Good news: Some epidemiologists think this may be beneficial for longer-term protection since it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":720,"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":[38,60],"tags":[65,86],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-immunity","category-risk","tag-reinfection","tag-underlying-conditions","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/covidqanda.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/March-19.png?fit=810%2C1268&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719","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=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covidqanda.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}