Why people are getting Covid twice in as little as one month

It is completely possible to get Covid-19 a second time, even weeks after the initial infection and Omicron is most likely the reason you could test positive again.

Epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett told Yahoo News Australia it is entirely possible to get reinfected, particularly if you’re hit with a different strain.

“A lot of people in December were reporting infections more consistent with Delta, we saw probably more people with Delta in hospital at that point that time,” Professor Bennett said.

“Your chances of Delta were a bit higher at the end of last year, and then your exposure to Omicron was almost universal, if you were in the cities with the big outbreaks in January.”

But getting the Delta strain does not guarantee protection against Omicron, in fact, some people are saying they are testing positive for Covid just weeks after their first infection.

However, Prof Bennett said it was less likely to get infected with the same variant twice.

“We don’t expect people to have Omicron and then Omicron again in a few weeks time,” she said.

“That’s less likely because they’ve got quite a specific immune response to Omicron.

“At the same time, we don’t know how long that immunity lasts and what their risk might be down the track, and that’s why boosters are really important.”

While a Delta infection doesn’t mean you are guaranteed protection against Omicron, Prof Bennett said Omicron may offer “a bit” of protection against Delta.

Prof Bennett also noted people don’t usually know which strain of Covid-19 they have

Sydney woman tests positive twice in one month

One woman from Sydney, Nat Sorensen, tested positive for Covid twice already this year.

She told news.com.au she was “shocked” and said it was “pretty unlucky”.

Several people in the comments of her first video also said they had also been reinfected with Covid in a very short amount of time.

On TikTok, Ms Sorensen said she was fully-vaccinated against Covid-19, and when one viewer questioned whether she had produced a false positive, she insisted she had some “pretty clear Covid symptoms”.

While it’s probably unlikely Ms Sorensen produced a false positive on her Covid tests, as she seems legitimately ill in her subsequent TikTok videos, Prof Bennett warned false positives could lead people to think they have been reinfected.

“There’s also a small risk that someone might have done a rapid antigen test and had a false positive, and thought they had in effect an asymptomatic infection,” Prof Bennett said.

“And then later they actually get symptoms tested and then they’re positive.”

Prof Bennett stressed the importance of getting a Covid booster, as it reduces symptomatic infection by 60 per cent.