Naturally Immune People at Little Risk of Reinfection, Severe Disease From COVID-19: Study

November 27, 2021 

People who recovered from COVID-19 are at little risk of contracting the disease again, according to a study published this week.

Researchers in Qatar examined a cohort of over 353,000 people using national databases that contain information about patients with polymerase-chain-reaction-confirmed infections.

The studied population contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, between Feb. 28, 2020, and April 28, 2021.

Reinfections were counted if a person tested positive at least 90 days after their first infection.

After excluding approximately 87,500 people with a vaccination record, researchers found those with immunity from having recovered from COVID-19 had little risk of reinfection and severe cases of the disease.

Just 1,304 reinfections were identified. That means 0.4 percent of people with natural immunity and without a vaccination record got COVID-19 a second time.

The odds of severe disease were 0.1 percent that at primary infection, according to the study. Just four such cases were detected.

No cases of death were recorded among those who got infected a second time.

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It was funded by Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar, Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health, the Hamad Medical Corporation, and Sidra Medicine.

The researchers, Laith Abu-Raddad with Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar and Dr. Robert Berollini with Qatar’s Ministery of Public Health, previously assessed the effectiveness of natural immunity against reinfection as being 85 percent or greater.

“Accordingly, for a person who has already had a primary infection, the risk of having a severe reinfection is only approximately 1% of the risk of a previously uninfected person having a severe primary infection,” they said.

“It needs to be determined whether such protection against severe disease at reinfection lasts for a longer period, analogous to the immunity that develops against other seasonal ‘common-cold’ coronaviruses, which elicit short-term immunity against mild reinfection but longer-term immunity against more severe illness with reinfection. If this were the case with SARS-CoV-2, the virus (or at least the variants studied to date) could adopt a more benign pattern of infection when it becomes endemic,” they added.

SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.

“Important study showing how rare reinfection and COVID severe disease is after recovered COVID,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on Twitter.

The study adds to the growing body of research that indicates people who recovered from COVID-19 enjoy high levels of immunity against reinfection, and even higher protection against severe disease and death, she added.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/naturally-immune-people-at-little-risk-of-reinfection-severe-disease-from-covid-19-study_4126747.html

Omicron Variant Causes Unusual but Mild Symptoms: South African Medical Association Head

November 27, 2021

The newest variant of concern of the virus that causes COVID-19 causes unusual symptoms but those symptoms are mild, a top South African doctor says.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee practices in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, one of the countries where the Omicron CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus variant was first detected earlier this month.

Coetzee recalled seeing a variety of patients enter with symptoms not associated with other CCP virus strains, including a high pulse rate.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” Coetzee told The Telegraph.

Most of the patients who turned up to her clinic and have tested positive for COVID-19 felt tired.

Other symptoms included sore muscles and a slight cough, Coetzee added to Sputnik.

“There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected, some are currently being treated at home,” she said.

The most common symptoms from earlier variants include fever, dry cough, and loss of taste or smell, though some patients are known to have suffered from fatigue. A small subset of the infected require hospital care for their symptoms, and deaths are mostly among the elderly and people with serious underlying health conditions like obesity and kidney disease.

People with the Omicron variant were also identified in Botswana and later detected in a slate of other areas, including Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

Many nations have barred or restricted travel from southern Africa over the variant, citing concerns that it’s more transmissible.

But top South African scientists told reporters Friday that little is known yet about Omicron.

Scientists are trying to gather more information about its transmissibility, whether it can evade immunity bestowed by vaccines or COVID-19 recovery, and whether it causes severe disease at a higher rate than other strains.

“Information on the virus is still evolving and no major conclusions can be drawn as yet,” Dr. Christopher Nyanga, Botswana’s health secretary, said in a statement dated Nov. 26.

Coetzee told The Guardian that experts weighing in how the variant may affect people were engaging in speculation.

“It may be it’s highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,” she said. “Maybe two weeks from now I will have a different opinion, but this is what we are seeing. So are we seriously worried? No. We are concerned and we watch what’s happening. But for now we’re saying, ‘OK: there’s a whole hype out there. [We’re] not sure why.'”

The United States ban on travelers from southern Africa was driven by a desire to better understand Omicron, health official Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a television appearance on Saturday.

“We want to give us some time to really fill in the blanks of what we don’t know right now,” he said.

South Africa on Saturday reported 3,220 new laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases, an increase of 9.2 percent from the prior day. Still, the average daily cases are down considerably from the summer, when it peaked around 11,500.

Just 30 new hospital admissions with COVID-19 were reported in the last 24 hours, but another African expert warned that Omicron could lead to healthcare systems being overburdened.

“I’m worried that as the numbers go up that public health institutions are going to be overwhelmed,” Rudo Mathivha, head of the intensive care unit at Soweto’s Baragwanath Hospital, told a recent briefing.

Mathivha said the hospital is seeing different patients than earlier in the pandemic, including more younger people.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/omicron-variant-causes-unusual-but-mild-symptoms-south-african-medical-association-head_4127014.html