Matt Hancock in commons today - we are seeing people with re-infection

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Just saw that we have confirmed credible cases of people being infected a 2nd time. How will this affect vaccine creation?

This isn’t completely my area but we are expecting the first infection to provide enough level of immunity (because the viruses are still so similar to each other) to stop the subsequent infection/s from being severe. In the same way, the vaccination will also do this. Theoretically at least...

Basically it makes a vaccine unlikely but I have thought this since we discovered immunity doesn’t last. Best hope is that even a four months effective vaccine is a useful tool to prevent local flare ups becoming national but I think the golden bullet of a vaccine is looking increasingly unlikely since natural immunity usually provides the limit for what any vaccine can do.

That’s absolute bollocks @qasd. Natural immunity is in no way the limit of what a vaccine can do. The experts are all very clear that reinfections don’t mean that a vaccine won’t work.

Yep what I thought all along, the same as there is no cure for the common cold. Mind you Russia seems to think they’ve cracked it but I think i’d rather take my chances with the virus than believe what Putin says.

@Qasd

Basically it makes a vaccine unlikely but I have thought this since we discovered immunity doesn’t last. Best hope is that even a four months effective vaccine is a useful tool to prevent local flare ups becoming national but I think the golden bullet of a vaccine is looking increasingly unlikely since natural immunity usually provides the limit for what any vaccine can do.

See this is an example of some of the things being written on here being harmful. If someone vulnerable reads that and panics....

What you've written is categorically not true. That's not what the experts are saying. The man in Hong Kong who was confirmed to be reinfected had a very different illness the second time in that he barely had any symptoms. His immune system recognised the virus and fought it off - it was a really mild thing for his body to go through. It was evidence that a vaccine will be a really useful tool, far more useful than preventing local flare ups becoming national. No, the vaccine isn't going to be a magic bullet which gets rid of the virus totally. That's unrealistic. But the vaccine is likely to significantly cut death rates and the number of people who get very unwell with the virus. I wish MNHQ had the staff to go around deleting things that are just opinions dressed as fact.

This has already been in the news. Firstly it's extremely rare and secondly the 2nd infections were asymptomatic and only picked up through random testing so the first infection clearly did confer protection.
But people can't resist a bit (more) scare-mongering, can they?

To what extent do we consider someone who has no symptoms to 'have' a disease? AFAIK all the 'reinfections' have been asymptomatic and picked up on testing for some other reason than having symptoms.

Surely this suggests that, having had Covid once, a person who encounters the virus again deals with it well and doesn't become ill. There are also the cases where the inactivated Covid genetic material remains in the throat long after recovery, but is picked up on testing.

A 'case' is someone who has tested positive to Covid material, not necessarily someone who is unwell from it.

@Alex50

Yep what I thought all along, the same as there is no cure for the common cold. Mind you Russia seems to think they’ve cracked it but I think i’d rather take my chances with the virus than believe what Putin says.

The 'common cold' is a mild illness caused by about 200 different viruses. Trying to vaccinate would be pointless.

Actual experts are still optimistic that one if not several vaccines for this coronavirus will be available quite soon. The fact that a very small percentage of people have caught the disease twice does not make such a vaccine unviable.

If you read what the scientists and experts say, they’re not especially concerned about cases of reinfection. They say it was absolutely to be expected, as with any virus, and is still looking fairly uncommon.

As for the vaccine, Sarah Gilbert, head of the Oxford vaccine, has said many times that the immunity gained from vaccination is expected to be significantly longer term and different/stronger than natural immunity. That’s pretty standard for vaccines, apparently.

Here’s an article where she talks about this:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.sciencetimes.com/amp/articles/26293/20200701/oxford-expert-claims-covid-19-vaccine-gives-long-term-immunity.htm

I think it’s really important to listen to what the scientists and experts say before declaring things like, “a vaccine is unlikely ”.

All the evidence in fact shows that an at least partially effective vaccine is very likely, and very soon.

Yep, exactly this.

Argh, fail. The “exactly this” was me attempting to reply to Wishing Chair, not to myself.

Its likely the eventual vaccine will give partial immunity - enough to minimise severe cases and deaths. After the first round of vaccines for everyone, we'll end up with some sort of vaccine programme where you get offered a booster vaccine every few years or it will just be targeted at vulnerable people like the flu vaccine.

So far, it's extremely rare (single figures when there have been hundreds of millions of cases worldwide). You cannot really draw any conclusions from a handful of incidents.

"It’s possible that these early cases of reinfection are outliers and have features that won’t apply to the tens of millions of other people who have already shaken off Covid-19.

“There are millions and millions of cases,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The real question that should get the most focus, Mina said, is, “What happens to most people?”
www.statnews.com/2020/08/28/covid-19-reinfection-implications/