Record COVID reinfection: a woman was infected twice in just 20 days

Two coronavirus infections in just 20 days is the shortest time between infections known in the world, this is the case of a 31-year-old Spanish woman who works as a healthcare worker.

The woman tested positive for the first time on December 20, 2021, in a PCR test during the evaluation of staff at her workplace. She was fully vaccinated and had received a booster vaccine 12 days earlier.

According to the researchers, upon learning of the first infection, the patient, who did not develop any symptoms, isolated herself for ten days before returning to work.

On January 10, 2022, just 20 days after the first positive test, he developed cough, fever and suffered general body discomfort, so he underwent another PCR test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2. The result was positive again.

The case was described by a team led by Gemma Recio, from the ICS Camp Clinical Laboratory in Tarragona-Terres de l'Ebre, which belongs to the Catalan Institute of Health, in Spain, and will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), which starts tomorrow in Lisbon.

What surprised the specialists is that re-infection happened in less than three weeks, the 20-day interval between infections is the shortest that has been detected globally so far.

Genomic sequencing of the virus showed that the patient had been infected with two different variants of SARS-CoV-2. His first infection, in December, was with the Delta variant. The second, in January, was with Ómicron.

The Omicron variant had been identified as a worrying variant by the World Health Organization (WHO) just over a month before the infection of women, on November 26, 2021. Omicron, which became dominant worldwide within a few weeks, is much more infectious than Delta and can evade immunity from past infections and vaccines.

Dr. Gemma Recio, from the Catalan Institute of Health in Tarragona, Spain, one of the authors of the study, highlighted: “This case highlights the potential of the Ómicron variant to evade previous immunity acquired either by natural infection with other variants or by vaccines”.

“People who have had COVID-19 cannot assume that they are protected against re-infection, even if they have been fully vaccinated. However, both previous infection with other variants and vaccination seem to partially protect against severe illness and hospitalization in people with Omicron,” the researchers' report added.

“This case also highlights the need for genomic surveillance of viruses in infections of those who are fully vaccinated and in cases of re-infection. Such monitoring will help detect variants with the ability to partially evade the immune response,” Dr. Recio expanded.

COVID-19 re-infections increased sharply in December 2021 around the world after the emergence of the Ómicron variant of the coronavirus, which is much more transmissible than previous versions of SARS-CoV-2. At the beginning of March, another increase in cases was recorded again in several countries in Europe and Asia, when BA.2 began circulating a sublineage of Ómicron.

KEEP READING:

What are the check-ups that a person who had COVID-19 should have