Staff wear protective face masks as the indoor mask mandate is reinstated in Philadelphia in April. Photographer: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg
All of these factors mean that huge swaths of the population once protected from infection may now be vulnerable.
There are just too many holes in the data to be able to judge the state of the pandemic accurately. It’s unclear how frequently reinfections are occurring or which variants people are getting reinfected with. The CDC's last update on reinfections was in January. The agency has not indicated whether it is tracking the cases and does not make such data available to the public.
A handful of state health departments, though, have taken to diligently monitoring the repeat cases. That data suggests reinfections are now happening more frequently.
The Colorado State Health Department, for example, has recorded more than 44,000 reinfections throughout the pandemic — 82% of which have occurred since omicron became the dominant variant in December. Reinfections are more common among the unvaccinated, but more than a third have happened to people who have completed their initial two-dose vaccine series, according to the data. Over 16% of reinfections in Colorado have been in people with at least one booster dose.
Data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services show reinfections in the state have been increasing since late March. Reinfections currently make up 8% of the state’s total infections for the week ending April 30. Repeat infections have been on the rise in Indiana, too, according to data, where they account for more than 12% of total cases, and in Idaho where they accounted for 18.5% of cases in the first quarter of 2022.
A report from Washington state published Wednesday shows that some reinfections are also leading to hospitalization. The age group most likely to get reinfected is 18 to 34 year olds, but people 65 and older are the most likely to get hospitalized after reinfection, the data show.
“It feels like the first time in two years that no matter if someone is really careful and does everything right, it won’t be surprising if they end up getting Covid,” said Wachter, at University of California, San Francisco. “We’re unquestionably in a surge.”
--With assistance from Carey Goldberg.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.