Risk of Reinfection and Incidence of Chronic Symptoms After SARS-CoV-2 Infections

Liam Golding; Allison W Watts; Mark Pitblado; Felicity Clemens; Marina Viñeta Paramo; Jacob Shew; Michael A Irvine; Bahaa Abu-Raya; David M Goldfarb; Louise C Mâsse; Pascal M Lavoie

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofae608

Risk of Reinfection and Incidence of Chronic Symptoms After SARS-CoV-2 Infections

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2024 Oct 15;11(10):ofae608. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofae608. eCollection 2024 Oct.

Authors

Liam Golding^{1

2}, Allison W Watts^{1

2}, Mark Pitblado¹, Felicity Clemens³, Marina Viñeta Paramo^{1

2}, Jacob Shew^{1

2}, Michael A Irvine³, Bahaa Abu-Raya^{1

2

4}, David M Goldfarb^{1

5}, Louise C Mâsse^{1

6}, Pascal M Lavoie^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
² Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
³ British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁴ Department of Pediatrics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
⁵ Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁶ School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Abstract

This study showed that a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection reduced the risk of reinfection among vaccinated individuals by 0.50 (95% CI, 0.39-0.64) over a 1-year period, after accounting for unreported infections using avidity-based serology. Reciprocally, chronic symptoms increased from a baseline of 21% (95% CI, 16%-28%) among infection-naïve individuals to 43% (95% CI, 30%-61%) in reinfected individuals.

Keywords: COVID-19; Omicron; SARS-CoV-2; post-COVID symptoms; serology.