According to a large, ongoing study, React, which is swab-testing thousands of volunteers in England, two-thirds of individuals recently infected with Omicron say that they have already had COVID-19 infection previously.

While more work is required to understand how many of these are true reinfections, the results reveal the groups that seem to be more likely to contract the infection again. These include healthcare workers and households with children or several members living under one roof.

Over two million people have been tested in the study and the latest findings, for the first two weeks of this year, come from nearly 100,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. About 4,000 tested positive. Two out of every three, i.e., 65% of the infected volunteers stated that they had previously tested positive for COVID… (BBC, January 26, 2022)