It is possible to catch Covid repeatedly within a short time period. Covid variants and sub-variants continue to emerge, causing a resurgence of coronavirus cases.
After catching Covid your body’s immune response helps fight off the virus. However, scientists are still unsure how long this protection lasts.
Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggests that people are more likely to be reinfected with the Omicron variant. ONS found that reinfections were ten times higher when Omicron became the dominant variant, between December 2021 and March of this year, than during the period that Delta was most common.
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Do vaccines stop you being reinfected with Covid?
Data from ONS also showed that people who protected themselves by getting vaccinated against Covid-19 were less likely to be reinfected. Unvaccinated people were approximately twice as likely to be reinfected than those who had received a second vaccine within the past 14 to 89 days, the data showed.
Those who had received their second vaccine more than 90 days ago were also more likely to be reinfected with Covid than those who had been vaccinated more recently. Welsh Health boards are now contacting all eligible adults for their booster appointments.
A spring booster is available until June 30, 2022, if you are over 75 years old, a resident in a care home for older people, or aged 12+ and immunosuppressed, Public Health Wales states.
If you are yet to be vaccinated with your first and second vaccine doses you will still be eligible. Check with your local health board for information.
What should you do if you test positive for Covid?
If you feel unwell with symptoms of Covid you should self-isolate and get tested for Covid, in line with Government guidelines in Wales.
If you receive a positive test you should self-isolate for five full days from the day after your positive test, or the day after your symptoms first started.
On day five of isolation you should take a lateral flow test (LFT). If the test is negative you should wait and test again on the sixth day to double check it is negative before returning to your usual routine.
If the test is positive on the fifth day you should continue to test each day until you get a negative test on two consecutive days. After ten days of isolation you can return to your normal routine, even if continuing to test positive.
However, if you still feel unwell or have a high temperature on the tenth day you're advised to continue self-isolating until you feel better. After leaving isolation following a Covid infection try to minimise contact with others and avoid crowds, particularly indoor.
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