--- title: Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 But Those Around Me Don’t? description: A new study explores how much control you really have over getting infected, and how much you don't. canonical: https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-02-08T22:24:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T17:06:05.312Z article:section: Health og:title: Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 But Those Around Me Don’t? og:description: A new study explores how much control you really have over getting infected, and how much you don't. og:url: https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e170c70931ddd63/698a485edb29878f8126a332/GettyImages-1372504585.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Hand of woman holding rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 But Those Around Me Don’t? twitter:description: A new study explores how much control you really have over getting infected, and how much you don't. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e170c70931ddd63/698a485edb29878f8126a332/GettyImages-1372504585.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 but Those Around Me Don’t? ## Video: U.S. House Coronavirus Panel Looks to 'Restore Trust' in the American Public for Vaccines [Watch (HLS stream): U.S. House Coronavirus Panel Looks to 'Restore Trust' in the American Public for Vaccines](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/67oaTizi.m3u8) (3:21)  _Published 2024-02-15. Lawmakers voiced concern on Capitol Hill Thursday about the need to "restore" trust in the public for vaccines, which include measles, influenza, and COVID-19._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 8, 2024 10:24 PM UTC  Hand of adult woman holding rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19 Hand of adult woman holding rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19Anke Scheibe/Westend61 —Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Feb 8, 2024 10:24 PM UTC COVID-19 doesn’t always affect people the same way. If someone gets sick, for example, not everyone in that person’s close social circle will get infected—even if they recently spent time together. But why? In a [paper recently published in _Nature Communications_](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44250-7), researchers delve into the different factors at play, from genetics to public health interventions, all of which affect how a virus spreads from one person to another. They found that at the beginning of the pandemic, environmental factors like social distancing, isolation, hand washing, mask wearing, and vaccination played a bigger role in whether people got infected, while over time, genetic factors have become more important. Now, genetics may account for anywhere from 30% to 70% of one’s chance of getting COVID-19, they concluded. ### More from TIME To reach that estimate, the researchers studied the health records from more than 12,000 people (who came from about 5,600 families total) who tested positive for COVID-19 at a large New York City hospital from Feb. 2020 to Oct. 2021\. To capture the role that non-genetic factors, such as a person's environment, play in their chance of getting infected with the virus or how severely ill they got if they were infected, they also categorized each person's potential exposure by weighing factors like who lived in their household, contact with their extended family, and what kind of housing they had. **Read More**: [_When Will We Get New COVID-19 Drugs?_](https://time.com/6588624/covid-19-antiviral-treatments-us/) At the beginning of the study, the researchers estimated that genetics accounted for about 33% of a person's likelihood of getting infected, while by the end, genetics accounted for 70%. That's a huge jump from previous studies, which estimated that a person's genes only explained about 1% of their likelihood of infection. This indicates that more genes are likely contributing than previously thought. “We don’t know what the specific genetic variants are yet, but we do know there are other genetic variants that confer some sort of susceptibility, which might explain why [some people are reinfected multiple times](https://time.com/6553340/covid-19-reinfection-risk/) and others seem resistant even if they are family members living together,” says Nicholas Tatonetti, associate professor of computational biomedicine at Cedars-Sinai and senior author of the paper. Why did genetics gain a bigger role as the pandemic progressed? At the beginning of the outbreak, public health measures such as mask mandates, lockdowns, and isolation practices had a bigger influence on who got infected, since nearly everyone was encountering SARS-CoV-2 for the first time and had little immunity to fend off the virus. But as people became infected and vaccinated, those environmental factors became more homogenized, and genetic factors related to people’s different immune responses began to emerge as the more prominent driver of who got infected and to what extent. It's not an exact science, but Tatonetti says this type of modeling can help public health experts understand when interventions like masks are most impactful. And it seems to be at the start of outbreaks. “These results show that public health practices really do matter, and they worked,” he says. That’s important to remember, since genetic factors are out of our control—while behavior changes can help us tip the balance, at least somewhat, in our favor. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/"},"headline":"Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 but Those Around Me Don’t?","datePublished":"2024-02-08T22:24:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T17:06:05.312Z","description":"A new study explores how much control you really have over getting infected, and how much you don't.","url":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/","keywords":["COVID-19","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e170c70931ddd63/698a485edb29878f8126a332/GettyImages-1372504585.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0e170c70931ddd63/698a485edb29878f8126a332/GettyImages-1372504585.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hand of woman holding rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19","caption":"Hand of woman holding rapid diagnostic test for COVID-19","creditText":"Anke Scheibe/Westend61 —Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/covid-19/","name":"COVID-19"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/","name":"Why Do I Keep Getting COVID-19 but Those Around Me Don’t?"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"U.S. House Coronavirus Panel Looks to 'Restore Trust' in the American Public for Vaccines","description":"Lawmakers voiced concern on Capitol Hill Thursday about the need to \"restore\" trust in the public for vaccines, which include measles, influenza, and COVID-19.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/67oaTizi/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-02-15T22:07:58.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/67oaTizi.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/","duration":"PT3M21S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6692837/covid-19-genes-reinfection/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```