Cases of COVID-19 reinfection are increasing in the population as the seventh wave rages on, according to the Association des microbiologistes du Québec. Should we be afraid of being infected several times by the virus?
Interviewed on the show Public place, the president of the Association des microbiologistes du Québec, Marc Hamilton, acknowledged that the immune response adapts to COVID-19 after an initial infection. Symptoms will usually be less severe with the second infection.
This is called immune training. Immune training means when your immune system has encountered a virus several times that is similar from one time to the next, it has already armed itself and it has already figured out how to fight it. Indeed, the more we catch it, the more the virus will become much less virulent, that is to say that there will be fewer side effects.
explained Marc Hamilton.
If the immune system is better equipped to fight the disease during a subsequent infection, the time elapsed between two infections can however play a role in the immune response of each person.
The microbiologist recalls that the virus can transform between two contaminations with COVID-19, which means that the symptoms could be different in certain cases from one infection to another.
Coronaviruses, even if you are vaccinated, it is something that your immune system will eventually forget. No matter how long after, you can catch a coronavirus that will have mutated during that time, which means that your immune system does not perceive it correctly,
said Mr. Hamilton.