When We Get Sick Can We Get Sick Again
MIT Medical answers your COVID-19 questions. Got a question about COVID-xix? Send information technology to the states at CovidQ@mit.edu , and nosotros'll exercise our best to provide an reply.
Ten days ago, I tested positive for COVID-19 after symptoms that began two days earlier. My husband'due south symptoms started a few days after that, and he also tested positive. At present, five days later, he's feeling a lot better — but a lilliputian fatigued — and was planning to go back to work tomorrow. Just just this morning time, our teenage son tells me that he has a bad headache and scratchy throat, and then I accept no dubiousness he has information technology as well. Our 12-year-old girl doesn't have any symptoms notwithstanding, merely I effigy it'due south only a matter of time.
So, I'chiliad completely recovered and living with ane person who is by and large recovered, but nosotros're living with someone else who just got ill and another who probably volition. Can one of them reinfect me? Can they reinfect each other? Is it possible that we could keep passing it back and forth and end upwards in a never-ending household quarantine?
As the more transmissible Omicron variant sweeps through households, including vaccinated households, we've been getting questions like this one more oft.
Fortunately for you and others dealing with multiple infections in the same household, the answer to all of your questions is "no." You lot and your husband are complimentary to cease your cocky-isolation at present, according to CDC guidelines. You lot don't have to worry about conveying the virus to people outside of your household, considering you can't transmit the virus unless you are actively infected. And since you and your family members were almost certainly infected with the aforementioned strain of the virus, you won't pass it around again.
In this way, COVID-19 is like the common cold, which is also a coronavirus. When y'all get a cold, your body articles antibodies to fight off the virus. And with those antibodies on full warning, yous're protected from reinfection for some period of time. And then even if someone in your household catches your common cold a few days later, and then another family member starts sneezing a few days subsequently that, they won't brand you sick once more. Yous'll go along getting better, while the cold virus runs its course in your unlucky, sniffling family unit members.
But while y'all won't laissez passer COVID-xix back and forth inside your household now, there is no guarantee that you won't be reinfected at some point in the future. When it comes to the common cold, enquiry shows that people can catch the aforementioned cold virus within 12 months. We don't know the level of immunity a person will accept later recovering from infection with the Omicron variant or how long it might concluding. There'due south evidence that Omicron is more than five times more likely than earlier variants to reinfect people who had recovered from a previous COVID-19 disease. While a recent South African written report appears to bear witness that infection with Omicron greatly increases immunity against the before variant, Delta, in that location'due south no guarantee that a future variant won't have some ability to evade whatsoever immunity your family has gained with your recent infections.
So, the good news is that, in the curt run, you won't continue ping-ponging your current illness back and forth across your household. Merely once you lot've all recovered, you should continue to take the usual precautions. Of course, the all-time thing yous tin can do to protect yourselves is to make sure you are upwards to engagement on your COVID vaccinations. There's evidence that vaccination after recovery from natural infection may be much more protective against future infection than either vaccination or infection lonely. And then, become vaccinated, if you haven't already, and get a booster when you're eligible (five months after your second mRNA vaccine or two months after your outset J&J). In the meantime, take intendance of each other, and nosotros hope you lot all get well presently!
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Source: https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2022/01/tag-youre-sick
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