UK student nurse caught COVID-19 four times

(CMR) A UK nursing student was left in disbelief recently after testing positive for COVID-19 for the fourth time since 2020. Mea Walton, who received two shots of a COVID-19 vaccine, was about to take a flight to LA and took a PCR test to check for COVID-19, and it came back positive.

“I thought, surely, I could never get it again,” she said.

The Guardian reported that the 20-year-old student nurse in the northeast of England caught her first infection in September 2020, shortly before she left for university.

Walton was working in a pub and wearing a face mask when she first caught the virus.

“I hadn’t left the house other than to go to work because I was working nine hours every day, coming home, getting up, going back to work,” she said. “I started to feel a tiny bit rundown, runny nose, and stuff – but I have allergies anyway. So I assumed it was an allergy.”

Walton was persuaded by her mother to take a PCR test, and the result was positive. “I just isolated in my room,” she said.

At the end of January 2021, both of Walton’s parents caught the virus and she took care to avoid contact. However, a few days later, she had to take a PCR test before starting her nursing placement and the result came back positive.

According to The Guardian report, the third infection came several weeks later. When a family friend fell very ill with Covid in Brussels in February that year, Walton flew out to help with childcare. On leaving the UK, she had a negative PCR test. But her return was delayed.

“I went to get my PCR to go home, and it came back positive,” she said.

Walton didn’t feel unwell for her second and third infections, but the fourth infection was different, bringing flu-like symptoms a couple of days after testing positive.

Walton, who is double-vaccinated and awaiting her booster, said there is an irony to her story.

“The funniest thing about it all, really, is every time I’ve had it, I’ve never been near a hospital. But all the time I’ve been working with Covid patients, I’ve never got it,” she said.