As the United States enters a new respiratory virus season, Americans will likely encounter the COVID-19 virus again.
For many, this will be their second, third or even fourth time getting the disease. So what should you expect this time?
Medical experts say the severity of COVID-19 symptoms the next time you get it will depend on a variety of personal and environmental factors, including your age, underlying health conditions, vaccination status and which variants are circulating.
“There are absolutely no guarantees about what will happen if you get reinfected with COVID-19,” said Raynard Washington, health director for Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and chair of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which represents local health departments across the country.
As the fall and winter progress, here are some key points to keep in mind about COVID-19 reinfection:
COVID Symptoms After Reinfection
Dr. Robert Hopkins Jr., medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said the most common symptoms of COVID-19 infection are fever, cough, muscle aches and sore throat.
Some people have reported diarrhea and fatigue, but other symptoms common early in the pandemic, such as loss of taste or smell, are now less common.
Medical experts say that’s partly due to changes in the variants, with the current circulating strains carrying genetic changes that cause certain symptoms but not others.
Long COVID:Teens and children are experiencing alarming new symptoms
The difference and severity of symptoms also depends on the immunity of the individual. Young, healthy people who have had the COVID-19 vaccine and have been infected before may experience milder symptoms after a second or third infection. However, this is not true for everyone.
The risk of reinfection is higher: Unvaccinated people, older people, those with compromised immune systems and those with multiple chronic conditions are more susceptible to severe infection, Hopkins said.
“But we also see infections in young, healthy people that we wouldn’t expect,” he said. “We’d like to say we have good predictors, but we don’t.”
Repeat infections and long COVID
Some studies suggest that the chances of Americans developing long COVID-19 from the omicron variant are lower than the chances of them developing it from strains of the virus that emerged earlier in the pandemic.
This isn’t an absolute rule — the new variants are still new to the scene, so it’s hard to say for sure — but Hopkins said there’s always a risk of developing long COVID with every new infection.
“The more cases you have, the more rolls of the dice you get and the more risk you have,” he said. “If people get infected repeatedly, it doesn’t reduce the risk.”
Studies have shown that the COVID-19 vaccines reduce the risk of developing long COVID-19, so medical experts are encouraging Americans to get the latest vaccine when it becomes available to them this fall.
The role of vaccination
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved updated versions of Moderna Inc’s Spikevax and Pfizer Inc’s Comirnaty vaccines that use messenger RNA technology to target the Omicron variant KP.2.
As the virus mutates, “you want to keep your immune system up to date, just like your iPhone,” Washington said. “You need the latest updates to keep your phone protected and functioning properly.”
In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention New vaccines recommended The vaccine is available to all Americans over the age of 6 months, and major pharmacy chains say they expect shipments of the vaccine to arrive in stores within the next few days.
Health experts say vaccination not only reduces the risk of long-term COVID-19, but also reduces the risk of developing severe symptoms that can lead to hospitalization and death.
“The great success of these vaccines is that they reduce the severity of the disease and save lives,” Washington said. “They protect us in advance and give our bodies the best fighting chance to recover from the virus.”
Adrianna Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected].
