The Omicron variant has been linked to an increase in Covid-19 infections around the world. The number of hospitalizations is lower, but the spread of infection is faster due to the Omicron’s high number of mutations.
This raises the question of whether the Omicron variant can be reinfect people. The World Health Organization (WHO), which monitors new and emerging variants of the constantly mutating coronavirus, has stated that the risk of reinfection is high.
The WHO stated in a note on the Omicron variant that the variant can evade previous immunity in people and can still infect people who have had Covid-19 in the past. It served as a warning to those who had not been immunised, and and those who were immunised months ago.
“Individuals who have recovered from Covid-19 are 3 to 5 times more likely to be reinfected with Omicron compared to Delta,” the WHO said in a press release last month.
However, it added that there is no evidence that Omicron causes more severe disease than the Delta variant, which caused a devastating second wave of infection last year in India.
According to the WHO, the virus was spread primarily among adults in their twenties and thirties, first in large cities and then in clusters associated with social and workplace gatherings.
But some studies said a combination of widespread immunity and numerous mutations has resulted in a virus that causes far less severe disease than previous iterations.
Such findings were released in a Bloomberg report which was based on ongoing Omicron research, including work done in South Africa, where the variant first appeared.
One important factor that makes Omicron less virulent is that it does not infect the lungs as easily as previous variants. A consortium of Japanese and American scientists who experimented on mice and hamsters published one such study. Another study in Belgium found similar results in hamsters that had previously mutated viruses that caused severe illness.
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