Study Claims COVID-19 Risk Reduces By 10 Months After First Infection

COVID-19 Reinfections: The risk of getting infected by coronavirus after the first infection can reduce up to 10 months, a study claimed.

A study published in the Lancet medical journal's Health and Longevity on Thursday looked at COVID-19 cases from October 2020 to February 2021 in more than 2000 care home individuals and their staff members.

What does the study reveal?

The study, which has been conducted by researchers at the University College London, found that residents of care homes who had previously contracted the virus were 85 per cent less likely to get reinfected than the ones who had not contracted the virus before.

The staff members were found to be 60 per cent less likely to get infected again. From more than two thousand care homes, 1439 staff and 682 residents were studied with an age median of 86. When the researchers conducted antibody blood tests in the residents, a third of them showed the presence of COVID-19 antibodies. Their antibodies were shown protective against the Alpha variant of coronavirus, a high-risk variant that was detected in the UK last year.

Maria Krutikov, the study's researcher was quoted by Reuters saying that the risk of reinfection appears to be very low.

"It’s really good news that natural infection protects against reinfection in this time period. The risk of being infected twice appears to be very low."

She added, "The fact that prior COVID-19 infection gives a high level of protection to care home residents is also reassuring, given past concerns that these individuals might have less robust immune responses associated with increasing age."

The study published by the researchers of University College London did not include the role of vaccination in infections. It is reported that the research scientists are looking at separate research regarding the effectiveness of the vaccines.