Confirmed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Reinfections After a Second Wave With Predominance of Lambda in Lima and Callao, Peru

Abstract

Introduction COVID-19 infection is a major public health problem in the world and reinfections are becoming more frequent. Our main objective was to describe the epidemiological, clinical and genomic characteristics of the confirmed cases of reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 in the capital of Lima and Callao, Peru. Methods We searched in the Peruvian laboratory information system from April 2020 up to May, 2021, looking for cases having 2 positive molecular tests for SARS-CoV-2 with more than 90 days between them. We performed genomic sequencing to the available pairs of samples and described the clinical characteristics, epidemiological and genomic of the confirmed reinfections. Results There were 1,694,164 people with a positive diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2 in Lima/Callao during the study period. Of these, 1,695 had 2 positive molecular tests with more than 90 days between them. 211 had both samples available for genomic analysis according to our selection criteria, these were retrieved and submitted to sequencing. 30 were confirmed to be SARS-CoV-2 reinfections having 2 different lineages in the 2 episodes. The variant Lambda (C.37) was the most common during the second infection, accounting for 19 (63.3%) of these. Conclusions We report 30 cases of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 reinfections. The Lambda variant was the most common cause of the second infections, in concordance with its predominant circulation during Peru´s second wave. This report describes the largest series of confirmed reinfections by SARS-CoV-2.

Relative vaccine effectiveness of the booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine for preventing death in individuals with a primary regimen based on the BBIBP-CorV, ChAdOx1-S, or BNT162b2 vaccines during the Omicron wave in Peru: A nested case-control study using national population data

“…The high relative effectiveness is relevant because, despite the peculiar characteristics of the Peruvian population, these estimates are consistent. Peru showed a very high rate of previous natural infection due to SARS-CoV-2 [36] and a very high rate of reinfections compared to other countries [37] , [38] . This might lead to the assumption that the third dose of vaccine could have been less effective than in other countries due to our more-intensely built natural population immunity.…”

Risk of reinfection and disease afterSARS‐CoV‐2 primary infection: Meta‐analysis

“…Of the 3282 papers initially retrieved, we included 91 cohort studies evaluating the onset of reinfection, severe and very severe/lethal COVID‐19 among 15,034,624 previously infected subjects (Figure 1), either among health care workers (27 publications; n = 37,598 2,8,9,15,17,24,36,38,42–59 ) or in the general population (67 publications; n = 14,997,026 3–7,10,12,16–23,25–27,43,49,60–106 ).…”

“…The mean age of the participants ranged from 15 to 87 years, and the average follow‐up ranged from 29 to 371 days. Overall, 38 publications strictly followed the CDC criteria to identify the reinfections and were classified at low risk of misclassification bias 10,16,19,20,22–24,26,36,44,45,48–50,54,56,58,59,68,71,72,75,84,86,89–91,94,99,100,102 . All but five studies ( n = 3,854,961) 66,71,88,91,96 were completed before the emergence of BA.1/B.1.1.529 (Omicron) variant.…”

“…Overall, a total of 158,478 reinfections were recorded among the 15,034,624 subjects with a previous infection, 2–10,12,13,15–27,36,38,42–107 corresponding to a pooled rate of 0.97% (95% CI: 0.71%–1.27%—Table 1; Figure 2). The summary rate of reinfection rose to 1.07% (95% CI: 0.73%–1.46%) when only the 69 datasets with a more conservative time lag of ≥90 days between the two episodes were considered 3–6,8–10,12,18–23,25,26,36,42–44,46–50,52–56,59,61–65,67–69,72–84,86,87,89,91–96,98,101,103,105–107 and it slightly varied by reinfection definition criteria (0.93% vs 1.01% when considering studies with high vs low risk of misclassification). The risk of reinfection was higher among health care workers as compared to the general population (1.20% vs 0.90), and among females (0.79% vs 0.55% among males), although these estimates showed largely overlapping confidence intervals.…”

“…Finally, in the 54 datasets that provided data for the analysis of very severe/lethal COVID‐19, 2,3,5,6,10,16–22,25–27,44,47–59,64–66,69,71–73,79,81,82,84–87,92,94,95,99–104 a total of 199 events were recorded among 3,574,793 previously infected individuals, corresponding to a pooled rate of 0.02% (0.01%–0.03%), which did not differ by time lag or definition criteria.…”