If you have been infected with corona before, there is a chance that you can get it again. This happens in about 12 percent of people who have tested positive, the RIVM reports. Yet there are also people who always escape the dance. Why is it that one person catches the virus over and over, while the other keeps escaping it?
The relatively high chance of reinfection seems to be part of omikron, because with the delta variant there was a re-infection in about 3 percent of the positively tested persons. Someone who got infected again is Anna Sanders. Not once, but four times she tested positive. “I’m really infected every time. In between the positive tests, I also have demonstrable evidence of negative PCR tests.”
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Nine months
It all happened in the span of nine months, while Sanders has been vaccinated twice. Unbelievable, she thinks to herself. “So I called the GGD about this. They had the test results of the third and fourth time examined more closely and came to the conclusion that I was infected with the delta variant the third time,” she tells EditieNL. “In the fourth test, there were partly other particles: those of the omikron variant.”
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Sanders has not been very ill all four times, but it is clumsy. “I’ve been in quarantine for more than a week four times between April 2021 and now, and I can’t say now that it’s conducive to everything I have to do in daily life.” Add to that even more quarantine days, because Sanders sometimes had to stay indoors after contact with infected people.
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Baukje Harmsma received a corona three times
© EditionNL
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‘A mystery’
Baukje Harmsma has also had corona several times: three times to be exact. The first time in October 2020, the second time in April last year and the last time just before Christmas. “I really have no idea how I got infected all three times. It’s quite a mystery.” Harmsma did live in rooms for a while, but she said she was the most careful in the whole house.
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During the first and last infection, Harmsma ‘felt sick’ for two to three days. “But that was really not that bad in comparison with the second time corona. Then I was really sick,” she says. She had a fever, could no longer smell, had difficulty breathing and had a sore throat. Harmsma was then in quarantine with her boyfriend, whom she, strangely enough, did not infect. “Am I just unlucky or am I extra prone?”
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Hans Zaaijer, medical microbiologist at blood bank Sanquin
© EditionNL
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Missing receptor?
According to medical microbiologist Hans Zaaijer of the Sanquin blood bank, the one person gets it several times and the other doesn’t at all. “Every virus needs a way to enter the cells of the body: it needs a so-called receptor, a kind of key that fits on the lock,” he explains. “Some people do not have that receptor for certain viruses, so you cannot get infected. We are already seeing it with HIV, but it could also be the case with corona. Then you are incredibly lucky.” It is rare and therefore unknown whether this is possible with corona.
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You can also inherit an immune system from your parents that is particularly suitable for keeping viruses at bay. But of course there are also unlucky ones, such as Sanders and Harmsma, who become infected time and again. “It’s like people who get a cold or the flu every year. We all have a weak spot in our immune system.”
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Antibodies and immune memory
What about antibodies? “Of course it is true that you build up antibodies when you get the virus, but antibodies can also decrease again,” says Zaaijer. “It differs per person how good those antibodies are, and how good the cell-bound defense and immune memory are. That also differs per virus.” It can even differ per mutation.
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An example from Zaaijer: “Someone who goes through hepatitis A has antibodies in the blood for life. But if you get hepatitis B, the antibodies eventually drop.” Yet you are immune for life due to the immune memory. Although the antibodies and immune memory decline after a while in a lot of infections. “An example is whooping cough. Babies are vaccinated, but after twenty to thirty years the immunity disappears. That is why pregnant women are vaccinated.”
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Extra susceptible or just bad luck?
So whether Harmsma is extra susceptible or just unlucky? “I don’t know her medical background, but usually it’s just bad luck because of a weaker point in your immune system,” says Zaaijer. “And so you also have that some people simply have a good immune system. They never get the flu while others get pneumonia.”
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