With the coronavirus being new, scientists have little data about a second infection. However, a Danish study, the results of which were published in the journal The Lancet, provides some answers.
What protection against reinfection?
The researchers were able to estimate the protection against repeated infection with the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus. They were based on national data in Denmark. Indeed, in 2020, 4 million people, or 69% of the Danish population, ” underwent 10.6 million tests »PCR. According to their analysis, 0.65% of people got a positive PCR test twice. In addition, the infection rate, 3.3%, was five times higher in the second wave of the epidemic for individuals who tested positive, with a negative result in the first wave. It turns out that people aged 65 or over have a greater risk of being infected with Covid-19 again. However, cases of re-infections remain rare, according to the study. Immunity to re-infection, conferred by natural infection, is 47% among these people. It is 80% among the youngest, according to the scientific journal The Lancet. However, scientists have focused their research on the original strain and not on the variants. No evaluation concerning the risks of reinfection with the variants exists to date.
The essential vaccination
Indeed, the figures are ” more worrying than those proposed by previous studies And vaccines protect against Covid-19. However, these results suggest reinfection with the coronavirus as a ” extremely rare event “. For researchers, “ a global immunization program with high efficacy vaccines is the sustainable solution “. However, with PCR test data as the sole basis, caution should be exercised in interpreting the results. Some people may have been asymptomatic during a second infection. Protection could then depend on the form of the disease at the time of the first infection and also on the age of the infected person.
