In the Netherlands, nearly 700,000 residents have been tested positive for the corona virus, according to statistics from the Johns Hopkins Institute. Dutch people who came into contact with the corona virus during the first wave of corona, do not have to worry about a possible recontamination during the second wave, experts tell NU.nl.
Pulmonologist Frits Franssen of the Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC) comes straight to the point. According to him, about 150 cases worldwide have been described of people who suffered from COVID-19 twice. “That’s a number to be ignored on a scale of 75 million infections.”
Eric Snijder, professor of molecular virology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), also states that recontamination “simply does not happen often”. Snijder states that the few reinfections have been in the news precisely because they are “exceptional”.
“Reinfections have often been reported in people who already have problems with their immune system. And that is not surprising because they already build up less immunity,” says Snijder.
Incidentally, it is not yet clear exactly how recontamination can occur. Medical experts have been researching for months whether a reinfection can occur because, for example, too little resistance has been built up or the virus changes. Snijder: “It doesn’t seem to be the virus”.
At least ten reinfections in the Netherlands
In early November, the WE that ten reinfections were found in the Netherlands. The RIVM was unable to hand over current figures to NU.nl this week. The national broadcaster also wrote that more reinfections are taking place than expected, because genetic research was not always carried out in the spring, which could reveal reinfections. Also, not everyone could be tested at the time.
That is no reason for both Snijder and Franssen to change their position. Franssen adds that in 90 percent of the people who had themselves tested with corona-related complaints such as a fever or a cold, no corona was yet diagnosed. “On the basis of laboratory-confirmed reinfections, reinfections appear to be a drop in the ocean,” said the pulmonologist.
‘Virus mutations hardly have any effect’
Virus mutations would also not be more likely to lead to a possible recontamination. Snijder states that the virus has hardly changed in the past year. Franssen cites a recent study in which 47,000 infections were analyzed and tens of thousands of virus variants were mapped. None of these mutations affected infectivity.
“Reinfections can occur, I am convinced”, continues Franssen, “but the vast majority of the population will not be infected a second time, unless a variant of the virus is introduced that cannot be controlled by the immune system’s memory.”
Although the lack of reinfections offers good prospects for science, because the virus appears to play a smaller role after an initial infection, Snijder believes that the pandemic will only be defeated when there is a great willingness to vaccinate. “That way you have to stop the virus. I understand that people don’t trust vaccines, but it also seems like people are actively becoming suspicious and looking for reasons not to trust science.”
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