The BA.5 strain has become the new dominant infection in the United States
A powerful new strain of Covid is capable of re-infecting patients within weeks of recovering from the virus, doctors around the world fear.
The strain BA.5 has become the new dominant infection in the United States and elsewhere on the planet. Doctors have long known that those infected with Covid then develop a level of immunity in the weeks that follow.
However, the new BA.5 variant has called that notion into question, with patients reporting they are testing positive again within a short time of recovering from the coronavirus, according to the Mirror.
Andrew Roberston, head of the health service in Western Australia, told News.com.au: “What we are seeing is an increasing number of people who are infected with BA.2 and then become infected after four weeks.”
“So maybe in six to eight weeks they develop a second infection and that’s almost certainly BA.4 or BA.5.”
Immunology professor Danny Altmann, author of a recent study on the strain, wrote in the Guardian newspaper how Omicron infections were a “poor booster” of immunity to other infections. He added: “Most people, even when triple vaccinated, had 20 times less of a neutralizing “antibody response” to Omicron.
Earlier this week scientists called for the return of a 10-day self-isolation period for Covid-19, to protect the NHS from an expected winter outbreak.
A Lancet study confirmed for the first time that two-thirds of people who contract the virus are still infectious to some degree after five days.
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