Objective  To examine the prevalence of underlying diseases potentially associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reinfection among residents in Henan province for developing targeted strategies on the containment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic.

  Methods  We carried out a face-to-face survey during March 2023 among 5 200 permanent residents (elder than one year) recruited with multistage random cluster sampling in 10 counties/districts across Henan province. The prevalence of eight uderlying diseases (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, cerebral apoplexy, allergic asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD, neoplasm, and chronic kidney disease CKD) potentially associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection among the participants were analyzed based on the information collected using a questionnaire having been used by Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Results  Among the 5188 participants with valid responses, 1 253 (24.2%) reported suffering from one or more of the eight underlying diseases and the number (proportion) of the participants suffering from one of the eight diseases were 883 (17.0%) for hypertension, 302 (5.8%) for diabetes mellitus, 254 (4.9%) for cardiac disease, 106 (2.0%) for stroke, 20 (0.4%) for allergic asthma, 17 (0.3%) for COPD, 17 (0.3%) for neoplasm, and 12 (0.2%) for CKD, respectively. There were 283 (5.5%) of the participants reported suffering from two or more of the eight underlying diseases; of the participants having comorbidities, 82.7%, 15.5%, and 1.8% suffered from 2, 3, and 4 of the eight underlying diseases, with the top four multimorbidity patterns of diabetes plus hypertension (reported by 95 33.6% of the participants), hypertension plus heart disease (83, 29.3%), hypertension plus stroke (28, 9.9%), and diabetes mellitus plus hypertension and heart disease (24, 8.5%).

  Conclusion  The prevalence of underlying diseases potentially associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection was higher and hypertension was a predominant underlying disease among the residents in Henan province. The results suggest that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection for persons with underlying diseases needs to be assessed.