ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — It’s been almost a year since COVID-19 first started infecting people across Florida, and thousands of residents have caught it.
Now, doctors are saying although it’s rare, you can be infected twice. That’s why even though you may have had COVID-19 already, you cannot let your guard down.
The Florida Department of Health said they are “aware of reinfections occurring among those who were exposed to the original COVID-19 strain.”
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But how does this happen?
If someone is infected with the virus, they build immunity to it. However, new studies show that immunity lasts about six to eight months, according to Dr. Marco Salemi with the University of Florida’s Institute of Emerging Pathogens.
“There is this window of time where potentially people are protected. And then afterwards, they are back in the pool of the possible targets for the virus,” he said.
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In Osceola County, the Department of Health said they “have worked a few cases of reinfection, but it has been in rare instances.”
In Orange County, Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino said the team has investigated at least two cases of reinfection.
The Department of Health said determining a reinfection is a judgment based on testing history and the timelines between first and second infection and symptoms.
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Right now, doctor’s concerns of reinfections are starting to rise because of the new mutations.
In Brazil, Salemi said, “a large number of new infections have been registered in the population, a lot of which occur in people that were previously infected and survived the infection.”
In England, Pino said, “They have seen high levels of reinfection with these variants and other variants.”
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That’s the variant we have hundreds of cases of now in Florida, the UK variant B117.
State officials said those now reinfected with the more contagious UK mutation were not previously infected with the original COVID-19 strain.
So with the worry rising over reinfections, would it be easier to fight off the virus because your body has already seen it before?
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New research out of Emory shows that if someone is reinfected, their “symptoms are mild and the virus is cleared from the body more quickly.”
It was not immediately known how many reinfection cases there are.
Cox Media Group
