Hi, and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic.

We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus

and the disease.

We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

I'm Tony Lewis.

I'm Josh Fishman.

And we are a scientific American senior health editors.

Today, we're going to discuss what we really know about BA-5 reinfection.

And we'll talk about one factor worldwide that is kept infections low, trust in people

around you.

I'm hearing more and more stories about people getting reinfected with COVID just a month

or two after recovering from an earlier bout.

Are those just stories or is reinfection really more common now with the BA-5 variant

running around?

I've been hearing those stories, too.

And it's true that BA-5 is better at evading our immune responses from past infection or

vaccination than any variant we've seen so far.

But the truth is, a prior infection does still give you some immunity, especially a prior

Omicron infection.

A preprint study done in Qatar that has not yet been peer reviewed found that a prior infection

with a non-omicron variant gave people about 15% protection from symptomatic BA-5 or

...