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South African researchers find evidence people more easily reinfected with Omicron variant than with other variants - CNN
Dec 03, 2021 1 min, 15 secs
They said it's too soon to know for sure, but a recent spike in second infections indicates to them that Omicron is more likely to reinfect people.

"Contrary to our expectations and experience with the previous variants, we are now experiencing an increase in the risk of reinfection that exceeds our prior experience," Juliet Pulliam, director of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis at Stellenbosch University, who helped lead the study team, said in a statement.

Omicron was only identified in November but has worried World Health Organization and other global health officials, who have designated it a variant of concern because of its many mutations affecting areas associated with transmissibility and ability to evade the immune system.

Pulliam and her colleagues looked at reports of infections covering 2.7 million people in South Africa since the beginning of the pandemic, including more than 35,000 people diagnosed more than once with Covid-19.

"We identified 35,670 individuals with at least two suspected infections (through 27 November 2021), 332 individuals with suspected third infections, and 1 individual with four suspected infections," they wrote in their report, posted online in a preprint, meaning it has not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal.

"Among the individuals who have had more than one reinfection, 47 (14.2%) experienced their third infection in November 2021, which suggests that many third infections are associated with transmission of the Omicron variant."

They are assuming the recent uptick in cases in South Africa reflects the spread of Omicron and not some other factor such as waning immunity.

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