HOUSTON — It’s easy to get lost in all the information that’s constantly coming out about COVID-19 so we’re verifying some of your questions.
Dan asked, "I had COVID, and now my wife has it. Is it true she can give it back to me? Can we keep transferring it back and forth?"
Our source for all of these questions is UT Health Houston and Memorial Hermann Infectious Diseases Physician Dr. Luis Ostrosky.
“We are not seeing re-infection with the same strain very frequently, in fact, it’s exceedingly rare," Ostrosky said.
He said that's false. You can not transfer the same COVID variant back and forth, but you can possibly catch a new variant, even shortly after your last infection.
“We don’t know how much protection omicron, which is the dominating variant right now, offers against delta or other variants down the line," Ostrosky said.
The next question: "Is it true I should get the virus on purpose to get it over with?"
To that, Ostrosky said absolutely not.
“That is the last thing we want people to do. We don’t want any COVID parties out there. COVID is still a deadly disease," Ostrosky said.
We can verify that is false. Getting the virus on purpose puts you in unknown danger.
“A percentage of people are going to get severely ill with this disease, are going to end up in the hospital and are going to die from it. Right now, it’s impossible to predict who’s going to be that person," Ostrosky said.
The last question: "Is it true COVID droplets stay inside your house? If so, how long?"
“We know that the virus can survive on surfaces for two to three days, but we also know that’s not the main way it transmits," Ostrosky said.
Ostrosky said it is true that a virus can live on surfaces, but he said a simple clean can fix that problem.
“A good regular cleaning with any household cleaning agent or disinfectant should be fine," Ostrosky said.