The findings come at a time when cases and hospitalizations are once again on the rise due to a new wave of coronavirus variations, most notably Omicron’s BA.5. According to information released on Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BA.5 was responsible for almost 54% of cases across the US last week, more than doubling its proportion of Covid-19 transmission over the previous two weeks.
Many people are vulnerable to reinfection because BA.5 carries crucial alterations that enable it to evade antibodies produced by both vaccinations and earlier infections.
The study was conducted by clinical epidemiologist Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis, and it was published as a preprint prior to peer review. He claimed that after noticing how frequently reinfections occurred in his own patients, he made the decision to act.
A year and a half ago, if you had asked Al-Aly about reinfection, he would have replied, “I might have a case here or there, but it’s really, really unusual.” But that’s no longer accurate.
“So, we posed the straightforward question: Does it truly increase risk if you previously contracted Covid and are currently dealing with a second infection? And the obvious response is yes, it does.”
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Tallying the risks of reinfections
Al-Aly and his team compared the health records of 38,000 persons with two or more proven Covid-19 infections with those of almost 250,000 people who had tested positive for the virus once. As the control group, more than 5.3 million individuals with no history of Covid-19 infection were used.
36,000 individuals had two Covid-19 infections, about 2,200 had it three times, and 246 had it four times among those who experienced reinfections.
Can sexual activity spread COVID-19?
When a virus-carrying person coughs, sneezes, or speaks, respiratory droplets are generated that transmit the infection. A person close may inhale these droplets or they may land in their mouth or nose. You might contract the virus if you kiss someone or engage in other sexual activities and come into touch with their spittle.
What are a few typical COVID-19 vaccination adverse effects?
Today’s data from the first six months following the introduction of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in the United States demonstrates that side effects are frequently minor and transient.
Researchers examined passive US surveillance data obtained through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the active system, v-safe, starting in December 2020 through the first six months of the US COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Hannah G. Rosenblum, MD, led the research team. V-safe is a voluntary smartphone-based system created in 2020 with the express purpose of tracking COVID-19 reaction rates and post-vaccination health impacts. This study is the first presentation of the v-safe health effects data.
VAERS processed 340,522 reports out of the 298.7 million doses of mRNA vaccines given in the US throughout the study period. Of those, 313,499 (92.1%) were minor, 22,527 (6.6%) were serious (but not fatal), and 4496 (1.3%) were fatalities.
According to v-safe reporting, more over half (about 71%) of the 7.9 million individuals experienced local or systemic reactions, and these events were more common after dose 2 than after dose 1. About two thirds (68.6%) of those who reported reactions following dose 1 had a local reaction, while 52.7 percent reported a systemic reaction.
Among other conclusions,
66.2 percent of individuals experienced pain at the injection site after dosage 1 and 68.6 percent after dose 2.
After doses 1 and 2, 33.9 percent and 55.7% of subjects, respectively, reported feeling tired.
Following doses 1 and 2, 46.2 percent of individuals (or 27%) had headaches.
The first week after immunization is typically when reports of injection site pain, lethargy, or headaches are made.
Following dose 2 (32.1 percent), reports of being unable to work or carry out daily activities as well as instances of seeking medical attention were reported more frequently than following dosage 1. (11.9 percent ). Less than 1% of individuals reported visiting a doctor after receiving doses 1 or 2 of the vaccination.
In comparison to male recipients, female recipients reported reactions and health problems more frequently, as did individuals under the age of 65.
Myocarditis and other severe adverse effects have been linked to mRNA vaccines, however these occurrences are uncommon.
According to the authors, preauthorization clinical trials and early post-authorization reports support these findings.
They note that, “especially among younger and female vaccine recipients, mild-to-moderate transitory reactogenicity could be anticipated” based on their findings.
“Robust and Reassuring Data”
“The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring stands out as the most thorough of any vaccine in US history. These complementary monitoring systems’ use has produced reliable and comforting data, “In a related commentary published in The Lancet, Matthew S. Krantz, MD, of the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Nashville, Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Elizabeth J. Phillips, MD, of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology at Vanderbilt, write.
They draw attention to the fact that the reaction reports from v-safe are in line with those from clinical trials and a sizable population research in the UK.
According to Phillips’ press release: “Although one in every 1000 people who receive a vaccination may experience a negative reaction, the majority of these are minor. In the VAERS report, no noteworthy trends in the causes of deaths or severe side events were found. It is comforting that there were no unanticipated signals for adverse effects of particular interest, aside from myopericarditis and allergy, which are already known to be connected to mRNA vaccines.”
Krantz and Phillips, the editorialists who wrote the study, have not revealed any pertinent financial connections.
If I already had COVID-19, should I still get the vaccine?
At the same appointment, you can receive the COVID-19 vaccine along with other vaccinations, such as the flu shot. Given alone or in combination with other vaccines, our systems’ ability to produce protection, known as an immunological response, and any side effects following vaccination are often the same, according to research on other vaccines. Find out more about when to administer different immunizations.
Regardless of whether you have COVID-19, you should still get vaccinated because:
- How long after recovering from COVID-19 you are shielded against contracting COVID-19 again has not yet been determined by research.
- Even if you’ve already had COVID-19, vaccination can still help protect you.
There is mounting evidence that receiving all recommended vaccinations provides greater protection than receiving COVID-19. According to one study, those who are not fully vaccinated and have once contracted COVID-19 are more than twice as likely to contract it again as those who are.
You must wait 90 days before receiving the COVID-19 vaccine if you received monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma as treatment for COVID-19. If you have any concerns about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine or if you are unsure about the treatments you underwent, speak with your doctor.
Consider delaying immunization until you or your kid has recovered from illness and for 90 days after the date of diagnosis of MIS-A or MIS-C if you or your child has a history of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults or children (MIS-A or MIS-C). Find out more about the clinical factors to be taken into account for those who have experienced multisystem MIS-C or MIS-A.
Unlike the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 reinfections are no longer uncommon, with more new variants emerging and leading to questions about immunity.
Many people who had previously been infected are now susceptible to reinfection with the variant, as well as its faster spreading subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5. This has resulted in a significant shift in “natural immunity.”
In May, Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, stated that evidence indicated that most COVID-infected individuals are immune to the virus for one to three months following infection.
Arwady asserted that there shouldn’t be “great concern” about catching the virus again soon, particularly in cases when patients are current on their coronavirus immunizations.
In the beginning, Arwady said, “we could actually safely claim that 90% of the people were not getting reinfected if they had COVID before, sort of back in February. “That has, however, been slightly declining globally.”
The majority of people will have some protection against recurring infections after recovering from COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC adds that alterations and mutations “may contribute to the formation of variations that can raise the risk of reinfection” and that “reinfections do occur after COVID-19.”
Can you contract a COVID-19 Omicron version again?
Long noted that although research indicated that having previously contracted the original omicron is not especially protective against reinfection with the new mutations, the true risk of contracting the infection, regardless of variant, is different for each individual and circumstance.
Arwady noted that COVID-19 immunizations have nevertheless continued to stop significant hospitalization and fatalities.
In the US, two novel omicron subvariants called BA.4 and BA.5 are spreading, but how contagious are they and what do we know about them?
Because of the very high rate of transmission, the virus is rapidly evolving, according to Arwady.
The chief physician of Chicago indicated that the Midwest records more BA.4 and BA.5 cases than the Northeastern region of the United States. But across the country, a strain that combines the two variations is now the most common.
As of June 25, BA.4 cases made up 16.9% of all cases in the Midwest, while BA.5 patients made up 39.4% of all cases. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15.7 percent of cases nationwide were BA.4 and 36.6 percent were BA.5.
The BA.2.12.1 lineage of the omicron was remained the most prevalent strain of COVID in the United States as of the previous week, accounting for almost 56% of cases. At the time, an estimated 23.5 percent of cases were BA.5.
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are less effective against the body’s “levels of neutralizing antibodies,” according to research, but they still offer “significant protection against severe sickness,” according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
The research suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 vaccinations will still help protect against serious illness, even while it suggests that these infections may grow in all groups, including those who have been vaccinated and given a booster shot.
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which have already been the predominant strains in South Africa, will probably overtake other strains of the virus in the next weeks, according to officials in Europe.
Despite the fact that Chicago’s scores have been dropping recently, the city is still below the “high community level” for COVID, according to the CDC.
Arwady further pointed out that the measures used by the city primarily do not take at-home test findings into account.
The frequency of Paxlovid rebound.
Less than 1% of patients receiving Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) treatment who were at high risk for developing severe COVID-19 also developed COVID-19 a second time, according to data from the Mayo Clinic published today in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
What potential sexual side effects of COVID-19 are there?
If the possibility of death or severe impairment isn’t enough to persuade someone to get vaccinated against COVID-19, males can also mention erectile dysfunction as a potential side effect of coronavirus infection.
According to a recent University of Florida Health study, men with COVID-19 are more than three times as likely as healthy men to be given an erectile dysfunction (ED) diagnosis. The study adds to growing evidence that COVID-19 may have an impact on sexual function, according to researchers.
He has a particular interest in the relationship between periodontal disease and erectile dysfunction, which, according to Katz, prompted him to start investigating a similar relationship between ED and COVID-19 once the pandemic started.
Examining patient records from UF Health, the study discovered 146 patientsor 4.7% of all the men with COVID-19 diagnoseswho had ED after a COVID-19 episode.
When a number of additional factors are taken into account, the association still holds true. For instance, the association between ED and men with respiratory disease was 1.6 times higher, the association with obesity was 1.8 times higher, the association with circulatory or cardiovascular disease was 1.9 times higher, the association with diabetes was 2.3 times higher, and the association with smoking was 3.5 times higher.
According to Katz, the penis and testicles are rich in the receptor that the coronavirus binds to.
In some places, the virus can attach itself. Additionally, studies have shown that COVID can lower the level of testosterone production. It has been demonstrated that losing testosterone increases the likelihood of experiencing a more serious COVID-19 outcome.
Additionally, he added, the decrease of testosterone raises the risk of ED. There could be additional mechanisms at work.
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Miami reported finding pieces of the coronavirus in the penis of many patients who had recovered from COVID-19 before developing impotence. The virus appears to have damaged the blood vessels in these patients’ penises and blocked blood flow there, affecting sexual function, according to scientists who stated COVID-19 is known to harm blood vessels.
Katz’s study has a few significant limitations. Although codes identified diagnoses rather than comprehensive medical histories, researchers were nevertheless able to search through a database of UF Health patients whose identities are kept secret from investigators. The inability to evaluate the severity of each patient’s COVID-19 and possibly other conditions that may have contributed to ED is one of the difficulties this causes.
Additionally, only one issue may be corrected at at a time by researchers. Thus, while they could make adjustments for, say, diabetes, they could not make adjustments for both diabetes and obesity.
Researchers concur that more study is required. However, scientists are beginning to consider the notion that ED is just one of a lengthy list of COVID symptoms.
In fact, a review of the evidence supporting a link between sexual dysfunction and COVID-19 was published in September’s issue of Sexual Medicine Reviews.
“According to a publication co-authored by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Diego, the evidence that COVID-19 infection causes or affects ED is substantial.
An relationship between ED and COVID-19 would not be unexpected, according to Kevin J. Campbell, M.D., an assistant professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of urology who specializes in men’s health, including ED. He also believes the study raises significant questions.
Campbell, a non-participant and unco-author of the paper, pointed out that viral diseases like influenza have been connected to decreased testosterone levels and sexual dysfunction.
“During a viral infection, your body is experiencing prolonged inflammation, and returning to homeostasis and your regular bodily rhythms can take some time, according to him.
Because of the stigma associated with ED, men are less likely to disclose it to doctors, according to Katz, suggesting that the potential relationship between ED and COVID-19 may be much larger than the data in his study imply.
Everyone should have a COVID-19 immunization, according to Katz. He thinks his research adds even another justification.
The fact that sex is such a crucial aspect of life should make people consider if they ought to get vaccinated, he said.