But she feels it’s likelier that people are simply more attuned to any respiratory symptoms they experience than they were a few years ago. There’s always the chance that COVID-19 is causing immune changes that haven’t shown up in the research yet, says Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist who devoted a recent edition of her newsletter to COVID-19’s impact on the immune system. So why does it seem that people are getting sick more often now than before the pandemic? Many scientists also think that chronic Long COVID symptoms could be a sign of immune dysfunction, and recent research suggests people with Long COVID are more likely to get reinfected by SARS-CoV-2 than people who fully recover.įor people who had mild cases and no long-lasting symptoms, though, Tsang says the scientific literature does not support the idea of widespread immunosuppression after COVID-19. People who have severe cases of COVID-19 may experience lasting health problems, either from the virus itself or from certain drugs used to treat serious COVID-19, such as steroids and immune-system modulators, Smith says. Measles essentially forces the body to re-learn how to fend off other infections, research shows, while HIV leaves people severely immunocompromised. But other viruses have more insidious effects. After a case of chickenpox, for example, the body typically builds lifelong immunity that prevents future bouts of the illness. Sometimes, these changes can be long-lasting. “It changes our B cells, which make antibodies, and it changes our T cells, which do cellular functions to clear out infections.” David Smith, chief of infectious diseases and global public health at UC San Diego Health. “Any time that we get an infection, it changes us,” says Dr. Some studies suggest the virus leaves its mark on the immune system even after an acute illness passes, raising an important question: does having COVID-19 increase your risk of getting sick from other viruses in the future? On the heels of last year’s severe flu and RSV reason, all this contagion has some people wondering if SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be to blame. Hospitals in some states are also reporting upticks in pediatric pneumonia diagnoses, which experts say seems to be unrelated to the recent spike of pneumonias reported in China. ![]() ![]() Respiratory disease season is in full swing, with influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 case counts rising in various parts of the U.S.
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