Covid-19 test (file photo). (Source: Getty) One such person is Sam Tipping, who first contracted the disease during the Alpha wave. More recently, he caught the Omicron variant. Tipping says that while there were only minor differences in symptoms, it was the drastic change in public attitudes in the years that split between the two executives that really struck him. “As for the headspace around it – the former you are almost out of the community while the latter everyone was trying to catch,” he says. Tipping never believed he was immune to a second infection, even with two piercings and a booster vaccine. “I never thought I was invincible and I thought I would catch it again, it was just a matter of what the symptoms were and what kind of effect it would have on my body.” And according to epidemiologist Michael Baker, data abroad show that re-infections are on the rise. “In the United Kingdom now about 10% of cases are classified as re-infections. “Some people, unfortunately, have been diagnosed with the infection three or four times now.” In Aotearoa, however, Baker says the number of Covid-19 cases is unknown, as the Department of Health is not collecting the data. “We should definitely look at re-infection as a key measure in New Zealand and it should be relatively easy to do.” According to Dr. Maia Brewerton, Clinical Immunologist at the Malaghan Institute, understanding the relationship between Covid-19 variants and our immune response will be one of the keys to developing effective vaccines. “The virus is constantly changing. “It is constantly trying to outdo us, which is why something like this is happening between our immune system and a virus that is evolving to change.”
