Covid experts are warning the public that if they catch the virus, they are not out of the clear just yet.
It comes as they warn individuals who caught omicron BA.5 that they can catch it again after just four weeks due to its rapid reinfection rate.
However, whilst getting the vaccine remains our best form of defence, the latest BA.5 variant of the virus, according to health experts, can re-infect people even if they have some form of antibody immunity.
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According to the Mirror, a combination of the vaccinations, antibody treatments and natural immunity from previous exposure to Covid-19 is said to be keeping infections in the UK in check.
Discussing the news, Western Australia's chief health officer Andrew Robertson told news.com.au: “They [new variants] seem to be able to evade the protection from either having had a previous infection with BA.2 or having had a vaccine.
“What we are seeing is an increasing number of people who have been infected with BA.2 and then becoming infected again after four weeks. So maybe six to eight weeks later they are developing a second infection and that’s almost certainly either BA4 or BA5.”
The latest figures from Public Health Scotland show that in the week ending July 3, there was 21,914 recorded cases, 4,001 (18.3%) of which were determined to be reinfections when applying the 90-day threshold.
In the same week, there were 877 admissions to hospital with a positive Covid test, with the highest number of new admissions aged over 80-years-old.
In addition, there were 39 new admissions to Intensive Care Units (ICUs) with a laboratory-confirmed test of covid, whilst there were on average 1,450 patients in hospital with the virus. This was an increase of 26.3 per cent from the previous week ending June 26.
The latest Covid information on Gov.uk says that BA.4 and BA.5 are quickly becoming the dominant variants, stating: “UKHSA’s latest analysis suggests that Omicron BA.5 is growing 35.1% faster than Omicron BA.2, while Omicron BA.4 is growing approximately 19.1% faster. This suggests that BA.5 is likely to become the dominant Covid-19 variant in the UK.
“The increasing prevalence of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 is likely to be a factor in the recent increase in cases seen in the UK and elsewhere, though there is currently no evidence that Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 cause more severe illness than previous variants.”
Dr David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Insider that BA.4 and BA.5 reinfections were thought to be less severe than earlier Covid outbreaks. He explained that as the virus evolves to develop resistance to antibodies, the body's immune system becomes better at dealing with it.
Dowdy said: “While the immune system still churns out antibodies to neutralise an infection, that protection tapers off over time. It's not an on-off switch but if someone is exposed to a tricky subvariant as their protection is waning, the virus may find an opening.
"Anything that can get around that immune response just a little bit faster has an advantage when a lot of the population is immune”.
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