Two-thirds of people with omicron say they’ve had Covid before
▻https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/more-than-two-thirds-of-omicron-cases-are-reinfections-study-suggests.html
Two-thirds of the 3,582 participants who tested positive in January reported they had already tested positive for Covid in the past. A further 7.5% of infected participants said they suspected they had previously had the virus, but had not had this confirmed with a test.
In an update on Thursday, Imperial researchers cautioned that it was uncertain what proportion of the results are reinfections, or just recent infections picked up again due to the sensitivity of PCR testing.
When previous variants of Covid were circulating among populations, it was thought that a prior infection, in which people had caught the virus and recovered, could offer some protection from reinfection. But there is concern that this is not the case with omicron, with U.K. health officials estimating in December that the risk of reinfection with omicron is 5.4 times greater than it is with the delta variant.
