When Covid-19 bites twice: Hong Kong reinfections ‘a small proportion’ of total, mostly milder than first bout

Under 2 per cent of current daily cases are reinfections, experts expect proportion to stay low

Some Hongkongers describe shock, dismay at testing positive a second time, but others are unfazed

Reading Time:4 minutes

Tiffany Mak was infected with Covid-19 twice. Photo: Handout

Published: 8:00am, 13 Sep 2022Updated: 8:09am, 13 Sep 2022

Tiffany Mak* was surprised and angry when she tested positive for Covid-19 on the fifth day of her hotel quarantine after returning to Hong Kong in June from a holiday in France.

It was her second infection in just four months, and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result meant her quarantine would be extended by five days.

“I had no symptoms and my rapid antigen test [RAT] result was negative,” said the 23-year-old marketing officer, who was sent to an isolation facility for infected people. “I was very angry.”

Mak had received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine when she and three other family members were infected in February.

She is among more than 3,000 Covid-19 reinfection cases, a figure revealed by Hong Kong health authorities last week amid a new surge in infections.

The Centre for Health Protection said around 1.5 to 1.9 per cent of daily cases were reinfections, defined as infections occurring three months or more after the first.

Health officials said 70 per cent of those cases first caught Covid-19 during Hong Kong’s fifth wave early this year, indicating that most might have been infected by the Omicron subvariant BA.2.2 before being reinfected by the BA.5 strain.