Delta variability increases the risk of re-infection

Orange, with media services Released on Thursday 07 October 2021 at 13:15

While a new report from the British official statistics agency points out the risk of re-infection due to delta variability, it emphasizes that it is low.

First detected in India in October 2020, the delta variant has grown in many countries around the world, such as France or the United Kingdom, where it has mainly dominated. In France, this represents more than 99% of descriptive scenes. The more infection, the higher the risk of re-infectionAccording to a new report from the Office for National Statistics, the official British Bureau of Statistics released a report on Wednesday, October 6 and released it on BFMTV.

The authors of the study write that “the risk of recurrence was higher after May 17, 2021 (the date of the appearance of the delta variant in the United Kingdom, as noted by the editor) than the previous period. The period during which the delta variant dominated”.

However, Cara Steel, a statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, assures. “Study shows lower number of re-infections with Govit-19 in the United Kingdom”, She says in the columns of the Evening Standard newspaper. Of the 20,262 people who followed from July 2, 2020 to September 25, 2021, 296 were diagnosed with re-infection. He stressed that the results were “encouraging” because the re-infections observed are less likely to cause severe forms of the disease compared to the first infection.

Patients with low viral loads are more likely to be infected again when the first infection occursPerhaps they have developed a weakened immune system. In addition, of the 296 recurrence cases identified, 137 delivered higher viral loads than their first infection. “This research suggests that viral loads may be higher if re-infection occurs during this recycling compared to other varieties from the delta variant,” the researchers wrote.

The authors of the study explain that women are more likely to be re-infected than men, and that people with symptoms are less likely to get re-infected during an infection. Finally, people with one or more pathologies have a slightly higher risk of recurrence.