Jordan Berkes is a member of a shrinking fraternity — he’s never contracted covid-19.

For two and a half years, the Shaler resident has managed to dodge the virus, its numerous variants and the occasional surge of cases.

As the latest wave of covid — the omicron subvariant known as BA.5 — sweeps the nation, Berkes is keeping his fingers crossed that his luck continues.

“We’ve certainly gotten other sicknesses, but never covid,” said Berkes, 36.

Berkes said he wears a mask where one is required, and he’s fully vaccinated and has received a booster.

“Generally, I take my vitamins and try to live in a healthy lifestyle,” he said. “Beyond that, I haven’t really done anything to try to not get covid. We travel a lot. I hadn’t really taken a lot of extra precautions.”

Experts said they can’t be sure why some people get the virus and others have escaped it — so far.

“Some individuals may have had inadvertent infection and have not truly escaped infection. Others may have severely limited social interaction during high prevalence times and been meticulous with mask wearing, and there are others who may have variations in their immune system — perhaps from prior coronavirus infections — that are able to fend off the virus,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Still others may have had covid and not even known it, said Dr. Graham Snyder, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at UPMC. Some people have had asymptomatic infections, or they may have had a mild infection that they assumed was the common cold or allergies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks antibody seroprevalence, which monitors what percentage of the population has antibodies from having had a covid-19 infection. There is no localized data on antibody seroprevalence available, but national data shows that about 57.7% of people in the United States have had the virus, Snyder said.

“That steadily has risen over time,” he said. “It’s particularly taking off with the latest omicron variants.”

That number, he said, is higher than the number of people who have received a positive covid-19 test — meaning some people have contracted the virus without knowing it.

“We know from the data that more people have had covid than think that they have,” Snyder said.

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Humphrey Gomberg said he has had several near misses.

Gomberg, who is vaccinated and double boosted, said his first close call was last August. He was in a crowd at PPG Paints Arena for his first concert since the pandemic started, and, although he was masked, many around him were not.

“I don’t know if I developed something psychosomatic, but I developed symptoms,” said Gomberg, 63, of Highland Park. “So I went and got tested. I was negative.”

He said he had another scare when he learned his 93-year-old mother tested positive at her assisted-living facility just two days after he had visited with her.

Again, he tested negative on a series of PCR tests, which are more reliable at detecting the virus than the rapid at-home tests being widely used nowadays.

“I don’t know what the secret is,” said Gomberg, who admitted to being cautious by wearing masks in public and largely limiting travel in the early days of the pandemic.

Still, he said, it might just be a matter of time.

“My sense is that it’s almost unavoidable to get it,” he said.

Berkes said he has benefited from working at home and avoiding contact with co-workers, but he still frequents bars and restaurants as he did before covid struck.

His son, Aaron, who is almost 2, has been attending a day care throughout the pandemic. And while there have been cases reported there, Aaron hasn’t contracted it or spread it to the family.

Berkes said he has visited with friends and family throughout the pandemic, and although some friends have had mild cases, he has remained covid-free.

“I think if we were going to get it, we probably would’ve gotten it by now based on the fact we haven’t been extra cautious about avoiding people or anything like that,” Berkes said. “I’m pretty confident that life is slowly returning to the way it used to be.”

Robert Quinlin, 76, of Fox Chapel, said he has been tested for the virus several times and has yet to get a positive result. The retired physician said he takes basic precautions but hasn’t been overly cautious.

“I’m not a mask freak, but I don’t hang out in bars or anything like that — just normal, cautious behavior,” he said. “A lot of people I know have caught the virus who are no more or less cautious than I am.”

Three of his four children have contracted the virus, he said, as well as about half of his 12 grandchildren. Luck, Quinlin said, seems to be the only reason he hasn’t tested positive.

His most recent close encounter, he said, was during a vacation with friends in North Carolina. He shared a house with three other people. He was the only one who didn’t contract the virus.

Quinlin, who is vaccinated, acknowledged that he’s “not exactly the optimal age” to get the virus. Still, he said, he’s not too afraid of it.

“If you get it, you get it,” he said. “Experience seems to show that, although the transmissibility of this virus seems to be increasing, the severity of it probably is lessening. I’m certainly less fearful than I was a year and a half ago.”

Nikki Saxion of North Apollo resident has managed to remain healthy while running a busy coffee shop.

“I maintained life as usual,” she said. “I work with the public at my sit-in coffee shop. I went to shop, exercised and went around the city as normal.”

Except for 2020, when much of the country and foreign travel was shut down, she said she didn’t shy away from visiting other countries.

“I traveled out of the country twice in that time, to both Jamaica and Aruba,” she said, “and I didn’t have any problems coming back with the virus.”

Adalja said he predicts that many of the individuals who have dodged the virus will become infected, particularly as more immune-evasive variants, like the omicron BA.5 subvariant, spread.

Snyder agreed, predicting that the number of people who have contracted covid-19 will continue to climb.

“The number of people who have not gotten covid is smaller and smaller,” he said. “It’s because we’re getting back to more and more of our usual, pre-covid social activities, which means more opportunity for the virus to spread.”

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