HYDERABAD: People who use
public transport and those involved in high-contact work have a lower risk of Covid-19 reinfection. This is because a large pool of people from such groups have already had Covid-19 infection and they have a high seropositivity for the virus.
A study, involving data of seropositivity from 24 cities, including Hyderabad, reveals only one in four people, who have seropositivity, could recall they had serious symptoms. This means 75% of people, who had Covid-19, did not experience any major symptoms. They only recalled flu-like symptoms indicating a majority did not know they had the virus.
The study involving 10,427 people from across India, including 2,073 staff from city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), and National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), was first published on January 19 and updated on February 28 on preprint journal ‘MedRxiv’’. The study revealed only 50% of those who had seropositivity had fever while 25% lost taste and smell. About 3% had issues with breathing that required oxygen support.
Researchers said people who use public transport had about 16% seropositivity as against 9% in people who use private transport. This means seropositivity is 20% more among those using public transport. “The fraction of such recovered subjects with resistance to reinfection was more than double among people performing high-contact jobs and using public transport,” researchers said.