Emerging evidence suggests that catching the coronavirus a second time can heighten long-term health risks.
Masked and unmasked commuters are seen at a Metro station in Los Angeles, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. Los Angeles County, the nation's largest by population, is facing a return to a broad indoor mask mandate if current trends in hospital admissions continue, health director Barbara Ferrer told county supervisors Tuesday.
“The additive risk is really not trivial, not insignificant. It’s really substantial,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs Saint Louis Healthcare System. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer recently cited Al-Aly’s pre-print study as rationale for wearing masks in indoor public settings to avoid reinfection.
“This concept of building immunity, it really only works if you’re encountering the same beast again and again and again,” Al-Aly said. But in the world of COVID-19, BA.5 is actually a “very different beast” than earlier variants. “Part of the reason why things, for many people, feel like they’re not so bad right now is because we are being very aggressive in countering the virus with vaccines, with treatments,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said during a healthcare summit hosted by the Hill. “If we took our foot off the pedal, we’re going to see this virus come back in a way that’s much more dangerous. So we’ve got to stay on that front footing and continue fighting this thing.
A separate report suggested that even adults who had received a booster dose still have to consider the risk of long COVID. A British report said that, during the initial omicron wave, about 1 in every 25 triple-vaccinated adults self-reported having long COVID three to four months after their first infection.
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