“We’re starting to see night sweats as a new symptom in BA.5,” Professor Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, told Irish radio station NewsTalk.
Coronavirus variants are becoming more and more adept at evading the immune system. For this reason, people who have had COVID before can get infected for the second or even third time and become sick. Fortunately, the newest coronavirus variant, BA.5, has similar characteristics to the Omicron variant and does not cause many fatal cases. However, the fact that it can be transmitted repeatedly worries experts.
Professor O’Neill says the reason for the different symptoms is partly due to genetic changes in the virus, but also to the way our immune system responds to an infection: “The disease progresses a little differently, because the virus has changed. We see that there is a little bit of immunity to it. “Being different may lead to a slightly different disease. Strangely, this new disease shows night sweats.”
Professor O’Neill also stresses the importance of being fully vaccinated to avoid the serious effects of infection.
We don’t have much data yet on how common the symptom of night sweats is. According to the ZOE COVID Study, the most reported symptoms of COVID among people vaccinated at two doses were runny nose, headache, sneezing, sore throat, and persistent cough. Other symptoms that were much more prominent before, such as loss of smell, shortness of breath, and fever, are now less common.
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