Study Maintains Reinfection Rate In Severe COVID 19 Cases Less Than 1%

Recent review of patients with severe COVID-19 infection showed less than 1% have contracted the disease again, with an average time to re-infection of 3.5 months after an initial positive test.

The work, carried out by researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, in collaboration with MU Health Care, aimed at understanding reinfection processes after browsing a picture of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.

The discovery aims to understand the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, one of the healthcare priorities in the current pandemic. For health authorities, it is important to determine the rate of reinfection, associated factors and mortality.

The researchers, using data from the MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics and the Tiger Institute for Health Innovation, analyzed the events in 62 health centers in the United States.

According to the work, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, The observation added the analysis of 9,119 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 who received serial tests from health centers between December 1, 2019 and November 13, 2020.

Reinfection was defined by two positive tests separated by an interval of more than 90 days, two after resolution of the first infection, confirmed by two or more consecutive negative tests. Additionally, the analysis considered logistic regression data to identify demographic and clinical characteristics associated with reinfection.

Control over these patients, They found that 63 of this group of people examined (0.7%) with severe COVID-19 infection contracted the virus a second time, with an average reinfection period of 116 days. Of the 63 re-infected, two (3.2%) died. Patients classified as non-white had a higher risk of re-infection than white patients.

Principal investigator Adnan Qureshi, professor of clinical neurology at the Missouri School of Medicine, explained that “The analysis also revealed that asthma and nicotine addiction were associated with reinfection.”

The publication points out that this study was most important in the analysis of COVID-19 re-infections. The group associated with the study noted among the findings that “reinfection with the coronavirus after an initial case is possible, and the duration of the immunity provided by an initial infection is not entirely clear “

However, Qureshi noted, it is observed “A significantly lower rate of pneumonia, heart failure and acute renal failure with reinfection compared to primary infection.”

In addition to Qureshi, study authors include Iryna Lobanova, MD, MU Medical School collaborator, research specialist in the department of neurology; S. Hasan Naqvi, MD, associate professor of clinical medicine; William Baskett, graduate student; Wei Huang, graduate student; and Chi-Ren Shyu, PhD, Director, MU Institute for Data Science and Professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, who analyzed and ordered the observation process among the cases that occurred.

Your study, Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 in Patients Undergoing Serial Laboratory Tests, was recently published in the magazine Clinical infectious diseases with support from the US National Institutes of Health.

The antecedent of The Lancet

Another study, previously published by the journal The Lancet, He had pointed out that obtaining COVID-19 significantly reduced the risk of being re-infected for at least the next 10 months.

To reach this conclusion, scientists at University College London (UCL) analyzed patterns of contagion among more than 2,000 people living or working in nursing homes in England between October 2020 and February 2021.

According to this work, residents who had overcome the disease in the past ten months were 85% less likely to be re-infected during the study period, while among employees the risk reduction was 60%.

For experts who worked on this analysis, strong protection was reflected in both groups, but they cautioned that the two percentages might not be directly comparable, as staff may have accessed tests outside of home. residency, so positive tests are not included in the study.

In addition, residents who tested positive for antibodies were probably a particularly robust group, having survived the first wave.

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