Vaccinate Your Kids or Ill Punch You Again

Iii generations, (from left to right) grandmother Genoveva Calloway, daughter Petra Gonzales, and granddaughter Vanesa Quintero, live side by side door to each other in San Pablo, Calif. Recently their extended family was striking with a second wave of COVID infections a year afterwards the first. Beth LaBerge/KQED hide caption

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Beth LaBerge/KQED

Iii generations, (from left to right) grandmother Genoveva Calloway, daughter Petra Gonzales, and granddaughter Vanesa Quintero, live next door to each other in San Pablo, Calif. Recently their extended family was hit with a second moving ridge of COVID infections a year afterwards the start.

Beth LaBerge/KQED

On a Friday afternoon in early October this yr, 8-year-old Maricia Redondo came home from her tertiary grade grade in the San Francisco Bay Area with puffy eyes, a runny nose and a cough.

"On Saturday forenoon we both got tested," says Vanessa Quintero, Maricia's 31-yr-old mother. "Our results came back Monday that we were both positive."

Vanessa stared at her phone in shock and chosen her doc's test-upshot hotline again, in atheism. "This is wrong," she thought. "I hung up and dialed again. It's positive. This is incorrect. I hung upwards once more. And so I did it once more!"

She was freaking out for two reasons. Beginning, her big, extended family had already fought a harrowing battle confronting COVID-19 concluding yr — in the autumn of 2020. The virus had traveled fast and furious through their working form neighborhood back then, in the East Bay city of San Pablo. Four generations of Vanessa's family alive next door to each other in three dissimilar houses at that place, all continued by a backyard.

Vanessa was likewise terrified because she couldn't fathom another round of treatment against a more dangerous variant than she'd faced earlier. The pandemic has disproportionately struck Latino families across the United States, and delta is currently the predominant variant in the U.Due south., co-ordinate to the U.S. Centers for Disease Command and Prevention. Information technology'southward twice as contagious and may crusade more severe illnesses than previous variants in unvaccinated people.

The family's bad luck was uncanny. Research suggests immunity against a natural infection lasts virtually a year. And here it was almost exactly the same time of twelvemonth and the family was fighting COVID-nineteen again.

"Reinfection is a thing," says Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a specialist in infections diseases and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. "It probably manifests itself more when the variant in boondocks looks dissimilar plenty from the previous variants. Or enough fourth dimension has elapsed since you first got it, [and] immunity has waned." He says a second infection is nonetheless not common, but doctors are starting to see more cases.

Computer models in a contempo report suggest that people who have been infected by the virus can await a reinfection inside a twelvemonth or 2 if they practice not wear a mask or receive a vaccination. The findings prove that the risk of a second bout rises over time. A person has a 5% chance of catching the virus four months subsequently an initial infection, only a 50% chance 17 months later.

"The second time information technology was scarier considering I'grand vaccinated," says Vanessa referring to the family'southward second bout with the virus in October 2021. "Her dad'due south vaccinated. We're protected in that sense, but she's [Maricia] not."

Her viii-twelvemonth-old daughter was still as well young to authorize for a vaccine. This fall the lilliputian girl lay in bed wheezing. Vanessa tripled down on Maricia'southward asthma medication and the parents quarantined themselves inside, besides. Vanessa shuddered at the prospect of telling her female parent and grandma nigh a second circular of positive test results.

The family'southward get-go battle with COVID

During a 2020 family gathering on Halloween, Maricia complained she wasn't feeling adept. Over the next few days Vanessa, and Vanessa'south partner, female parent, two cousins, two aunts, an uncle and 2 grandmothers all tested positive for COVID-nineteen. Eventually at least 13 family members caught the virus at that time and several got quite sick.

Multiple family members had to be rushed to the hospital.

Vanessa, who, like her 8-year-old daughter Maricia, suffers from asthma, was the get-go person to need that emergency intendance. "I was on the floor," Vanessa remembers. "I couldn't even say 'I'k hungry' without coughing."

Then Vanessa's 51-year-old mother, Petra Gonzales, nigh blacked out.

"I got a really loftier fever," says Petra. "There were times when I'd fall asleep and I was OK if I didn't wake up."

In last twelvemonth'south COVID bout, Petra landed in the ER with astringent aridity. Soon she heard that her 71-year-old mother, Genoveva Calloway, needed infirmary care for dangerously low oxygen levels and was being treated at another infirmary across town.

Different Petra and Vanessa, who were not admitted for an extended stay at the hospital in 2020, and slowly recovered at home, Genoveva'south condition was critical. She spent day afterward day under shut supervision from doctors and nurses.

"It was really painful not to be able to assist my family, because we always help each other," says Genoveva, as her vocalism cracked with emotion. "We are e'er there for each other. Information technology was then horrible."

Finally, afterward nearly two weeks in the hospital, Genoveva was discharged. She was withal continued to an oxygen automobile every bit nurses shuffled her out. When Genoveva and Petra greeted each other on the street, they embraced fiercely.

"She hugged me then tight," says Genoveva. "I'll never forget that. Nosotros missed each other and so much."

A year later, though, Genoveva is withal recovering. She's now plagued by interstitial lung disease. That's why another circular of the virus this year is a terrifying possibility.

Fewer family unit members sick the second fourth dimension — they credit vaccination

Fortunately the family's worst fears did not unfold. Genoveva was out of town when her great-granddaughter, Maricia, brought the virus domicile this time, and Maricia herself recovered. The other adults did not develop symptoms — they credit the COVID vaccinations they'd been able to become before the delta surge this fall. Research published by the Centers of Illness Command and Prevention concludes that vaccines offer better protection against reinfections than a natural infection. However, if a breakthrough infection occurs after someone'due south been vaccinated information technology will act like a natural "booster" and result in hybrid amnesty co-ordinate to Chin-Hong. He suggests nigh patients who are non immunocompromised look three months until after a recent infection earlier getting a vaccine or a booster.

"Each exposure we accept, whether it's from the infection or whether it'southward from the vaccine, improves our power to combat an infection the next fourth dimension around," says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Stanford Academy.

Just Parsonnet also notes there are a lot of variables at play. Get-go, immunity wanes. 2d, the virus can mutate. Third, no vaccine provides 100% protection, and the shots may not be equally protective for anybody.

"At that place are certain people, including the elderly, people who are immunocompromised and people on dialysis, who really can't mountain a good allowed response," Parsonnet says. "They're ever also going to be at run a risk. So every kid getting vaccinated helps protect all those other people in the family unit that they may alive with, or their neighbors."

Multi-generational living is common in Genoveva's customs in the Bay Expanse. And her metropolis, San Pablo, is a hot spot in Contra Costa Canton, where 1 out of eleven people take tested positive for the coronavirus. At the height of the pandemic, nearly 800 people tested positive in the canton every day.

"Our neighborhood has three, iv generations living in the same business firm," Genoveva says.

She says her recent booster shot allows her more peace of mind. Genoveva is looking forward to the day when her bang-up-granddaughter and the residue of her family are finally vaccinated.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/11/27/1058128612/covid-reinfection-kids-grandparents-immunity-waning

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