There’s increasing evidence that those who get COVID-19 can get it again, according to State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box.
“Until recently, we had not seen cases where people were definitively reinfected,” she explained during last week’s press conference. “But I can tell you that these are individuals within a three-to-four-month period of time that, once again, became symptomatic and were tested and were positive, and they actually looked at the genetics of that virus and knew that that particular strain of this SARS-CoV-2 virus was a little bit different, different enough that it was a reinfection.”
That means that when a vaccine does come out, individuals will likely have to keep getting it, as they do with the flu shot. “We hope that immunity lasts over a good six-month-to-12-month period of time, but we don’t know that when that comes out,” Box said, “and it’s probably something that, like influenza, will be a repeated vaccine, on at least a yearly basis.”
Box said the knowledge that reinfection was a possibility has led her department to question the idea of “herd immunity” from the beginning. She noted that certain other strains of coronavirus – like the ones that cause the common cold – are known to infect people repeatedly.
