People have been warned that recently having had Covid is no protection against catching it again as the latest subvariant can reinfect you after just four weeks. Experts say 325,000 people in the UK are now catching Covid every day - in part because of the rapid reinfection rate of the new variant BA.5.
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 BA2 or having had a vaccine. What we are seeing is an increasing number of people who have been infected with BA2 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 BA.4 or BA.5.”
The latest Government figures show that coronavirus cases in England had risen by 26.5% in a week. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued an alert to remind people to ensure they have had any vaccines that they are eligible for and to follow Covid-safe practices such as regular hand washing.
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 said : "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."
