Photo / Andrew Warner
OPINION:
I am a medical marvel. That sounds quite exciting, but unfortunately, the thing that marks me out is my unrivalled ability to catch Covid.
Since late April 2020, I've had the virus not once, not twice, but five separate times.
My first infection was towards the end of April 2020 and I didn't even realise I had it at the time; it wasn't until I found myself coughing and spluttering after running 100 metres out of my front door – which felt odd as I'd done a half-marathon just a few weeks earlier. I took a test and got my first positive.
The second one, around October 2020, was much the same. I wouldn't have known I'd had it if a friend I'd been for a walk with hadn't prompted me to test after he came up positive.
Number three was in July 2021. I'd been invited to the Wimbledon Men's Final and, despite everyone having to present a negative test on entry, it seems someone managed to give it to me there. That one, presumably Delta, was horrible. I was laid up in bed for a week with immense pressure headaches which felt like someone was pushing shards of glass into my brain. There was some suggestion at the time that the infection might have been bad because it came about two weeks after I had my first jab.
Five weeks after I recovered when I went to get my second vaccine, the doctor explained the antibodies created from having the jab, combined with those from the active infection, were probably battling it out within my body.
All was clear ahead of my booster vaccine in mid-December until, just after Christmas, I got what I assumed was a cold but the tests came up positive – hello, Omicron – but I was already back to normal by the time work resumed in January.
Perhaps the booster hadn't had time to kick in yet, although experts say the vaccine doesn't actually seem to do much to prevent you from catching the virus – it's more about preventing serious illness.
And then last week I got what I thought was the early onset of hayfever, only to be told a recent contact had tested positive and I should probably break out the lateral flows again... and guess what happened? Presumably, this one is the new version of Omicron, BA.2 which is now dominant in the UK.
I wish I could tell you that this is because I spent the pandemic living life to the max, attending illicit raves and refusing to kowtow to the overzealous police enforcement but, for the most part, I've just gone with the flow and stuck to the rules. I wore my mask on public transport for as long as it was mandated and stopped when it wasn't – not for ideological reasons, more that I'm still incredibly prone to forgetting and losing masks.
I should probably also count myself lucky that, at 28, I've been young and healthy enough to fight off the virus every time I've had it, even before I was fully vaccinated. So how common are multiple reinfections like mine?
"I've never come across anyone who has had it five times," Professor Denis Kinane of the University Of Bern, and founder of Covid screening service Cignpost Diagnostics, tells me. "Three has been the max I've seen. You're a leader." Praise indeed.
Still, perhaps it's not quite as surprising as it seems. New data from the UK's Office Of National statistics shows that infections are on the up in Britain, with just over 4.9 million Britons infected in the week leading up to 26 March – around one in every 13 people.
What's interesting is that, according to the UK Health Security Agency, reinfections are making up a good portion of these. In the most recent week of data, the seven days before 20 March, 50,866 Britons have recorded a second infection, 8717 are on their third and 74 are on their fourth episode. So far there's no data on how many people are on their fifth turn. However, given that testing has been down recently and only looks to get worse now that lateral flow tests are no longer freely available to the general public, these figures could be an undercount.
Part of the reason for this is the aforementioned new variant of Omicron, named BA.2. It is similar but even more infectious than the BA.1 variant which took hold in Britain just before Christmas. Some evidence suggests that BA.2 is slipping past the defences of those who've previously had other variants and even, in some cases like mine, those who've had Omicron BA.1 too.
ONS data suggests that those most likely to get reinfected are those who've not been vaccinated (unlike me) although young people seem at slightly higher risk of reinfection as well, presumably because they're more likely to be socialising and mixing.
None of this is necessarily anything to worry about, Professor Kinane explains. "You'll have both natural immunity through your infections and vaccine-induced immunity, and that immunity will protect you from dying or getting bad symptoms," he says. "However, it's not going to protect you from catching nor spreading the infection. According to our research, once you're vaccinated there's a 10-20 per cent chance that you'll be less infectious than someone unvaccinated. Really you're getting vaccinated to avoid dying from the virus, not to avoid catching it."
But why do I seem to be in some kind of Pokémon-style Gotta-Catch-'Em-All situation with Covid, while other people are only getting it once or even not at all? "You probably have a poor immune response to Covid," suggests Professor Kinane. "This happens with various things. Certain people get hayfever, others don't. Certain people are more susceptible to Covid, others aren't."
These small variances in our immune systems are important because if we all had the exact same immune response to everything, a disease that could kill one of us could kill us all.
"Even close family members have slightly different immune systems," Kinane continues. "I see it all the time. When myself and my kids got Covid, it didn't touch my wife at all."
Natalie Trice, 47, from Devon, is another such lucky person when it comes to Covid. "Neither myself nor my husband and sons have had it all," she says. "I had all the vaccines and the first and third made me really ill but none of us has had Covid. I wouldn't say I've gone out of my way to avoid it. I've unknowingly had lunch with people who then tested positive and nothing and close contact at school. We did endless PCR tests before Christmas but nothing came of them."
Simply put, Trice and her family seem to be on the opposite end of the spectrum to me – while my immune ability to cope with Covid isn't great, theirs is very good.
On the other hand, an actor I spoke to in his 30s, who asked not to be named for fear of jeopardising future roles, tells me he had Covid twice within seven months before he was jabbed. "I have no idea how it happened," he explained. "I lost two relatives to Covid so I knew how serious it could be so I was very compliant with all the rules and self-isolated longer than I needed to really because I was so worried about passing it on. I'm terrified of getting it again."
However, for those who do seem to keep getting infected, don't despair. Though my immune response to Covid is quite poor, I'm assured that this doesn't necessarily mean I have a weak immune system overall. In fact, prior to Covid, I'd not even suffered so much as flu for about a decade. "You're just unlucky in this," Kinane says. "Who knows? You could be lucky in lots of other things and be immune to a lot of other things. Nobody is immune to everything, some of us are just luckier with some things than others."
I'm not too worried. For me, it seems, Covid reinfection is inevitable – why fight it? According to Kinane: "The zero-Covid practise in China has failed and their Eastern Seaboard is mostly locked down. We're expecting a variant there that'll spread during what is winter in the southern hemisphere. I'd keep an eye out around mid-to-late summer if I were you."
Well, it's always nice to have something to look forward to, isn't it?
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