Thousands of people have been reinfected with COVID-19 in Washington, new report showsFree

Thousands of Washington residents have tested positive for COVID-19 after recovering from the virus , a new report from the Department of Health shows.

The department considers a person to be reinfected if they test positive at least 90 days apart, or genotyping shows they had two different variants.

The department’s count only includes people who have a confirmed positive test result reported to the state, so people who test positive with an at-home test would not be included in this report unless they are reporting their results.

From September through January, there have been 29,940 confirmed reinfections in Washington residents, and 2 percent, or 619 of those people, were hospitalized with their reinfection, state data show.

Reinfections, much like breakthrough cases, have increased with the omicron wave. The variant is more effective at evading current COVID vaccines than the delta variant was. Similarly, people who tested positive during the delta wave are not necessarily immune to the omicron variant.

There have been 326,338 breakthrough infections confirmed statewide in the last year. A breakthrough infection is when a person who is two weeks past their second dose of a mRNA vaccine or Johnson & Johnson vaccination tests positive.

Hospitalization data is not available for the majority of breakthrough infections confirmed by the Department of Health. Of the reported cases, 2 percent resulted in hospitalization.