Are repeat COVID infections dangerous? What the science says By Dr.Mahboob Khan
Researchers disagree over how bad it is to be reinfected, and whether COVID-19 can cause lasting changes to the immune system. When the coronavirus pandemic began in early 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a strange and terrifying adversary that plunged the world into chaos. More than three years later, the infection’s symptoms are all too familiar and COVID-19 is here to stay — part of a long list of common diseases that infect humans. Experts estimate that the majority of the world’s population has been infected at least once; in the United States, some estimates suggest that as many as 65% of people have had multiple infections 1 . And it’s likely that in the decades to come, we’re all destined to get COVID-19 many more times . Just how much harm repeat infections will cause is a matter of debate. “There are some almost pathologically polarized opinions out there,” says Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London. One side argues that SARS-CoV-2 is a run-...