As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows
Nearly one-third of the U.S. population lives in counties rated as having “high” transmission levels by the CDC. Cases are rising especially in the South and West.
BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country.
The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all.
Antibodies from vaccines and previous covid infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”
“It’s the wild west out there,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “There are no public health measures at all. We’re in a very peculiar spot, where the risk is vivid and it’s out there, but we’ve let our guard down and we’ve chosen, deliberately, to expose ourselves and make ourselves more vulnerable.”
any coronavirus infection carries risk, and the risk of a really bad outcome — a heart attack, for example — builds cumulatively, like a plaque, as infections multiply.
“Reinfection adds risk,” he said. “You’re rolling the dice again. You’re playing Russian roulette.”
Vaccination remains an important, if still underused, weapon against the virus — even if it’s not that effective at stopping new infections.