11-yr-old Israeli Boy Catches 3 Different Covid Variants: Report

JERUSALEM:
In a rare case, an 11-year-old Israeli boy has been infected with three different Covid variants in a year.

Alon Helfgott has officially been infected with Alpha, Delta, and now Omicron. He’s been in quarantine 3-4 times since the start of the school year, The Times of Israel reported.

Helfgott, from the central Israel city of Kfar Saba, tested positive for Omicron last week. The boy, although in isolation, is doing well than when infected with previous variants.

“I’m fine, feeling pretty healthy, without so many symptoms,” he told Channel 12 news on Sunday.

Compared to the previous strains, which Helfgott said he experienced with pretty serious symptoms, this time he does not feel that sick.

“In the Alpha (infection), I suffered from a high fever,” he said.

Despite his thorough experience with quarantine, Helfgott stated that boredom manages to overcome everything.

He added that since the start of the school year, he was forced to enter quarantine “between three and four times”.

“I try to pass the time in bed or on the phone. There are really no things to do,” he said.

With his birthday coming up on Wednesday, the day in which he is expected to be released from quarantine, Helfgott made a wish to “stay healthy and not get infected again”, the report said.

While Covid is known to provide protection against repeated infections, reinfections do occur after in some cases.

In a similar case in July last year, a 61-year-old Delhi doctor contracted both the Alpha and Delta variants after vaccination, presenting the first such documented case of two reinfections and two breakthrough infections.

She first tested positive on August 16, 2020, and was asymptomatic.

On April 12, 2021 she was tested positive for the second time and had symptoms such as acute abdominal pain, fever, myalgia, and fatigue. Within 19 days, on May 3, she tested positive for the third time.

There have also been documented cases of confections, where people were infected with two different strains at the same time.

According to a study published in Nature, people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 can expect to become reinfected within one or two years, unless they take precautions such as getting vaccinated and wearing masks.

The results suggest that the average reinfection risk rises from about 5 per cent four months after initial infection to 50 per cent by 17 months.