Don Seiffert and Laura Justice of Salem caught COVID in May. But during a
trip to Ireland in July, the couple contracted the virus yet again. “We
felt pretty safe,” said Justice, 52. “We were wrong.”
It’s an increasingly familiar story, my
colleague Camille Caldera reported. COVID
reinfections were uncommon in the early days of the pandemic, but the
Omicron subvariants can more easily evade the immune system and get
people ill repeatedly — sometimes in a short span of time.
The US hasn’t systematically tracked reinfections. But in the UK last
summer, reinfections accounted for less than 2 percent of cases. By June
2022, they made up over 25 percent of the country’s cases each day.
If that makes you wonder how the pandemic is progressing in
Massachusetts, here are
four helpful charts. Cases and hospitalizations are both
well below the Omicron peak earlier this year, but rising at
a worrying rate in the last two weeks alone. Citing that
data, health officials are urging people to wear masks in crowded indoor
places, including public transportation (and of course, get vaccinated).
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