But reinfections aren't harmless, according to the latest studies. "There is some early evidence show[ing] that if you had COVID-19, there can be all sorts of problems after getting infected" and reinfected, says Dr. Robert Murphy, professor of medicine and executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. "We are just at the beginning of learning about them."
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, studies Long COVID, a condition marked by health effects that linger after infection. "Reinfection remains consequential," he says. In a paper published in Nature Medicine in 2022, he found that people who had gotten COVID-19 at least twice experienced higher rates of short- and long-term health effects, including heart, lung, and brain issues, compared with those who were infected only once.
This story is from the February 12, 2024 edition of Time.
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This story is from the February 12, 2024 edition of Time.
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