For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the U.K. Health Security Agency has added reinfections -- or people who have tested positive for COVID-19 more than once -- to its case data on the official COVID-19 dashboard.
The updated numbers now include more than 588,000 reinfections since the start of the pandemic in England, as well as nearly 23,000 reinfections in Northern Ireland. Scotland and Wales will add their data in coming days, the agency said.
Until Monday, only first-time infections were reported. But with the Omicron variant and potential new variants, reinfections will likely become more common, according. Scientists have said that including reinfection data in the daily figures will help public health experts track the evolution of the pandemic.
“Reinfection remained at very low levels until the start of the Omicron wave. It is right that our daily reporting processes reflect how the virus has changed,” Steven Riley, PhD, the agency’s director general of data and analytics, said“We continue to see downward trends in case numbers and incidence of illness as we work to reduce the impact of the pandemic on our day-to-day lives,” he said.
The number of overall reinfections is still low, he said. They make up about 4% of the 15 million positive tests recorded so far. But reinfections have been rising since the surge in Omicron cases in December. Reinfections represented about 1.4% of daily cases until mid-November, and now they make up about 10% of daily cases.
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