Burden of PCR-Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection in the U.S. Veterans Administration, March 2020 – January 2022

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Abstract

An essential precondition for successful “herd immunity” strategies for the control of SARS-CoV-2 is that reinfection with the virus be relatively rare. Some infection control, prioritization, and testing strategies for SARS-CoV-2 were designed on the premise of rare re-infection. The U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) includes 171 medical centers and 1,112 outpatient sites of care, with widespread SARS-CoV-2 test availability. We used the VHA’s unified, longitudinal electronic health record to measure the frequency of re-infection with SARS-CoV-2 at least 90 days after initial diagnosis

We identified 308,051 initial cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosed in VHA between March 2020 and January 2022; 58,456 (19.0%) were associated with VHA hospitalizations. A second PCR-positive test occurred in 9,203 patients in VA at least 90-days after their first positive test in VHA; 1,562 (17.0%) were associated with VHA hospitalizations. An additional 189 cases were identified as PCR-positive a third time at least 90-days after their second PCR-positive infection in VHA; 49 (25.9%) were associated with VHA hospitalizations.

The absolute number of re-infections increased from less than 500 per month through November 2021, to over 4,000 per month in January 2022.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.20.22272571: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


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