People who have had severe COVID-19 and worry about going through another bout of it can relax: New research finds that less than 1% of people who’ve had a severe coronavirus infection get re-infected.
For the study, University of Missouri researchers analyzed data from more than 9,100 COVID-19 patients at 62 health facilities in the United States.
Only 0.7% of patients with severe COVID-19 infection contracted the virus a second time, with a mean re-infection period of 116 days. Of those who were re-infected, 3.2% died.
Non-white patients had a higher risk of re-infection than white patients, according to the study published recently in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
“Our analysis also found asthma and nicotine dependence were associated with re-infection,” said lead researcher Dr. Adnan Qureshi, a professor of clinical neurology at the University of Missouri’s School of Medicine, in Columbia.
“However, there was a significantly lower rate of pneumonia, heart failure and acute kidney injury observed with re-infection compared with primary infection,” Qureshi added in a university news release.
