Can You Get Coronavirus Twice? What Experts Are Saying About Immunity and New COVID-19 Strains

The original omicron variant is similar enough to its subvariants that “immunity to BA.1 might offer you some protection against the others,” Gale said. “But they’re different enough that, depending on the individual, you could also you could get reinfected with a different omicron variant.”

How many times can you get COVID-19? What to know about reinfections as BA.5 spreads

Could mask mandates return as BA.5 variant drives COVID cases?

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Feb. 18, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC / Updated July 15, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

Now in the midst of yet another COVID-19 surge in the U.S., some people may find themselves recovering from a coronavirus infection or even reinfection.

As the virus mutates and your protection from a previous infection wanes, you can be reinfected by the coronavirus. So even if you got sick during the previous delta, omicron or BA.2 waves, that doesn’t mean you’re immune from the other coronavirus variants and subvariants that are taking over now.

Right now, the BA.5 variant is fueling the majority of cases in the U.S., according to data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. But other related variants — including BA.4 and BA.2.12.1 — are still out there.

Pre-tax flexible spending accounts (FSAs) are often touted as the answer to high out-of-pocket medical costs, but many FSAs have “use it or lose it” rules. FSA holders lose $50 to $100 per year on average, CBS News reported, but since you’re allowed to contribute up to $2,650, you could risk losing thousands of dollars if you don’t spend your FSA money in time.

While getting COVID-19 can provide some protection against a future coronavirus infection for a short time, experts say it’s much safer to rely on vaccines and boosters for that protection instead. And if you got COVID-19 previously, you should still get vaccinated to protect yourself and those around you in the future.

Can you get reinfected with the coronavirus?

Yes, it’s definitely possible to get COVID-19 more than once.

“Even before the virus started to turn into different variants, even with the original strain that was circulating, there were already many documented cases of people getting reinfected,” Dr. Otto Yang, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told TODAY.

That’s not particularly surprising considering that you can be infected and reinfected within a year by pre-COVID coronaviruses that cause the common cold, he said.

As more variants emerge, including the BA.5 strain, reinfections only become more likely because those variants can potentially evade the immune protection you already have.

“If you had delta, you can get omicron — definitely,” Dr. Bernard Camins, medical director for infection prevention at the Mount Sinai Health System, told TODAY. And the reverse is true as well; if you had an infection with the omicron variant, you can still get delta. That’s because “the spike protein of the delta variant is very different from the spike protein of omicron,” Camins said.

The coronavirus spike protein is what the virus uses to infect human cells. Antibodies that you might develop after a previous COVID-19 infection “have to bind to a really specific area of the spike protein to block the virus,” Yang explained.

If the spike protein keeps changing in significant ways, antibodies aren’t as able to do their jobs to protect you from infection. So, if more coronavirus variants emerge, that makes reinfections more likely.

How many times can you get infected with the coronavirus?

Whether or not you’ll be reinfected — and how many times you’ll be reinfected — depends on a few factors, Michael Gale, Ph.D., an immunologist at the University of Washington, told TODAY.

The first key is variants. As mutations arise, especially in the coronavirus’s spike protein, they can help the virus evade the natural defenses that the body builds up after an infection. Next is the community level of protection and spread. If the virus is able to spread widely within a community, there’s a better chance you’ll be exposed.

But whether the exposure will lead to another infection can come down to individual differences in biology and behavior. Some people naturally develop a more robust response after vaccination or an infection, which will provide more protection down the line, Gale explained.

If it feels like reinfections are becoming more common, there is some data to back that up: Researchers in South Africa recently found that the omicron wave made reinfections significantly more likely than they were during the previous delta and beta waves. And with new omicron subvariants taking over, reinfections could become even more frequent.

The original omicron variant is similar enough to its subvariants that “immunity to BA.1 might offer you some protection against the others,” Gale said. “But they’re different enough that, depending on the individual, you could also you could get reinfected with a different omicron variant.”

In fact, other recent research, published to a preprint server, found that it was possible for people get BA.2 infections after an omicron infection — and that the two infections could occur less than 60 days apart. Other research, published in Nature, found that an omicron infection doesn’t necessarily protect against infections with emerging variants BA.2.12.1, BA.4 or BA.5.

So, will COVID-19 eventually be like the common cold, infecting us multiple times in a year? “It could be, as long as it keeps changing,” Gale said.

And we may reach a point where people can get infected within a few weeks rather than months, he said. “It just depends on the individual.” Those individual biological and behavioral differences, combined with the dynamics of a virus that’s still changing rapidly, may make it possible for some people to become infected more frequently than we’re used to.

In fact, experts told TODAY that the BA.5 variant is better than previous strains at getting around the protection we have from vaccines and past infections. But the norm will likely still be for people to have at least a few months in between infections, they said.

“Typically, it would be a few months as your antibodies from the previous infection start to wane and you get exposed to a new variant,” Gale explained. “(At that point), you have lesser antibody protection, and the virus is different enough that it could confer a new infection.”

One thing that would help prevent that is for the entire population to develop immunity to omicron, Gale said, ideally through a variant-specific booster or second-generation COVID-19 vaccine. Just last month, the Food and Drug Administration directed manufacturers to include protection against subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 (along with the original strain) in new COVID-19 vaccines. And the FDA anticipates those new vaccines becoming available in the fall.

We can also continue to use those familiar public health tools (such as vaccines, boosters, tests and masks) which will prevent infections and reduce the chances for more variants to develop.

Can You Get Coronavirus Twice? What Experts Are Saying About Immunity and New COVID-19 Strains

Getting infected twice is possible, but it is more complicated (and rare!) than you may think.

By Zee Krstic Published: Feb 16, 2021

• Getting COVID-19 twice is possible, but reinfection is extremely rare, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Scientists are still researching how long natural immunity lasts on average, and how COVID-19 antibodies may prevent further infection; one study estimates a range of 8 months of boosted immunity.
• New coronavirus variants could pose a threat to those who have recovered from COVID-19 earlier in 2020, experts say.

For health experts, there is still so much left to learn about the novel coronavirus — but if one thing is certain, it’s that COVID-19 infections are evolving this winter due to brand new strains that experts haven’t seen before. With more than 24 million COVID-19 cases reported in the United States over the last 11 months, some are wondering if these new variants could cause reinfection, even if they pushed past the disease the first time around.

As is standard with most of our questions about COVID-19, there isn’t a simple answer — but the short one is that variants, old and new, can indeed make you sick once more. Getting COVID-19 twice is possible, but it is more complicated (and rare!) than you may think.

Scientists are rapidly identifying new variants that are spreading across the world. One of the earliest COVID-19 variations was identified in the United Kingdom, but isn’t as troublesome to experts as other strains, primarily a variant known as B.1.351, with origins having been largely traced back to South Africa.

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Additionally, there are three other variants that have been flagged for being able to spread too rapidly, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and scientists are worried these strains may mutate further to impact vaccination efforts, CNN reports. But the variant first traced to South Africa has already shown signs that it may push past any immunity granted to people, either because they’ve already been sick or have received a vaccine.

“These variants are getting smarter; they’re just adapting to be able to grow better in humans… even without having to adapt to the vaccine,” says Nelson Michael, M.D., the director of Walter Reed Army Institute of Research’s Center for Infectious Disease Research. “The thing that worries me about this variant [discovered in South Africa] is that as it became better at replicating, it also happened to develop the kinds of characteristics that make it less susceptible to monoclonal antibodies that we developed, some therapies, and tools, like vaccines, to prevent infection.”

But Dr. Michael says most health experts are confident that vaccinations will work to stem the spread of all COVID-19 variants. Early data suggests a full vaccination provides enough antibodies to fight off a range of variants, as reported by the Guardian , but more importantly, Dr. Michael explains that vaccine manufacturers are already actively tweaking their vaccines for the near future to better respond to particular variants.

Is it possible to get reinfected with COVID-19?

Yes, but the likelihood of this happening is rare. Current CDC language states that “reinfection with COVID-19 have been reported, but remain rare” overall. Reinfection means you’ve successfully overcome COVID-19 at some point, fully recovered and have tested negative for an active SARS-CoV-2 infection, before then contracting the virus again at a later date (even if you don’t show symptoms). Many experts, including those at the CDC, maintain that confirmed reinfections are very rare — but the issue here may be that care providers have trouble determining when the first infection is over and when a second one begins.

“For almost every doctor who cares for COVID patients, there have been questions raised about whether some of their patients may indeed have had second infections,” explains William Schaffner, M.D., the medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, adding that most data suggests natural immunity lasts for at least 6 months. “But on occasion, there are people who, even within six months, think they may have been infected twice — they may have, but we just don’t have enough scientific information to confirm that a second infection did occur.”

What’s clear, however, is that anyone who has immunity — whether because they’ve recovered from COVID-19 directly or have received a vaccine — must continue to practice preventative measures to avoid getting sick twice. Both doctors agree: Immunity and its antibodies produced by an infection doesn’t make you invincible, but can aid your body in fighting off smaller, targeted amounts of SARS-CoV-2 should you come across it once more.

How long does COVID-19 immunity last? Will it protect me from new strains?

Like many other aspects of this disease, scientists are still researching to determine a firm timeframe of how long antibodies are active in those who were infected with SARS-CoV-2. One particular study may provide some insight into a future definitive answer, despite the fact that it has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Researchers reviewed antibody counts in over 180 confirmed COVID-19 cases, tracking them over time. The findings suggest that antibodies and other immunity signifiers were noted as far as eight months out from first infection, but did discover some variation in the number of antibodies produced between individuals. It’s unclear why some individuals were noted to have higher antibody counts compared to others.

With so much talk about the new COVID-19 variants, you may be wondering if a mutated version of SARS-CoV-2 may render any earned immunity ineffective? While it hasn’t been largely documented, Dr. Michael says it is possible, and that your second case of COVID-19 may be largely different than the first.

“Being infected with a new strain might be something you don’t notice at first because you have enough immunity to essentially fight off almost all the side effects that come from that second infection,” he explains, adding that these infections may go entirely undiagnosed. “Not to say, well, that’s great — because you may pass it along to someone who’s very susceptible to any strain.”

The best way to avoid a second infection is to continue to be vigilant about practicing social distancing, hand hygiene, and wearing masks any time you are in public — and, when the time comes, to receive a vaccine. Likely, you’ll continue to receive new vaccines as new variants develop in the future, Dr. Schaffner explains.

“Current vaccines seem to be able to prevent severe disease, even in the circumstance that you’re dealing with a known variant. So there’s going to be at the least, partial protection,” he adds, using the annual flu shot as an example. “We have to reconfigure that vaccine on an annual basis, and even if you get influenza after taking the vaccine, it’s almost invariably a milder case, one that’s less severe.

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Health Editor

Zee Krstic is a health editor for Good Housekeeping, where he covers health and nutrition news, decodes diet and fitness trends and reviews the best products in the wellness aisle. Prior to joining GH in 2019, Zee fostered a nutrition background as an editor at Cooking Light and is continually developing his grasp of holistic health through collaboration with leading academic experts and clinical care providers. He has written about food and dining for Time, among other publications.