New COVID-19 variant increasing cases and reinfections, health experts say

ATLANTA — As highly contagious COVID-19 variants spread, more families are being impacted.

But what if you already had COVID? Can you count on some natural protection?

Channel 2′s Linda Stouffer talked to doctors about what we know now about COVID variants and reinfections.

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Most COVID cases right now in Georgia are this super contagious BA.5 variant.

This variant is finding people who have avoided COVID so far and the people who already had COVID and thought they would be protected.

“Your prior protection against omicron is not going to help you with this new strain,” Dr. Saju Matthew at Piedmont Healthcare says.

Dr. Matthew says if you already had COVID even earlier this year, it may not help protect you now.

“You see here in the office with omicron, I was seeing patients with colds and congestions, upper respiratory infections, but now it’s actually going deep in the lungs, patients are coughing, patients are having wheezing like symptoms. And if you had omicron few months ago, unfortunately, because of these mutations, you do not have protection against BA.5,” Dr. Matthew says.

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At Grady Memorial Hospital, chief of staff Dr. Robert Jansen says they are seeing a spike in patients and staff testing positive for COVID-19.

“I think that what’s happening with BA.5 is that it is so transmissible and because of these mutations, it’s really a different virus. It attacks you more quickly, it penetrates the lungs more quickly. And also because it’s evading the vaccine,” he says.

Both doctors say the best protection we have from severe COVID are the COVID vaccines. And the medical community is hoping in a few months variant specific boosters will be ready.

“So if you looked early in the pandemic, the immunity seemed to last longer. But that’s because those early variants were not resistant,” Dr. Jansen says. “As time has gone on, and the viruses evolved, it escapes immunity, that’s the natural history of viruses. So, I don’t know if the immunity is waning, per se, or it’s just the escape from the immunity that we’re seeing with the new variants.”

Gene sequencing company Helix says out of nearly 300,000 infections since March 2020 through 2021, reinfections have almost doubled.

Going from 3.6% during the BA.2 wave in May to 6.4% during BA.5 in July.

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