Hello, if anyone is interested in this topic, I have also asked this on StackOverflow and we came to the same conclusion that there is definitely something wrong with using PDFKit in UICollectionView (but also UITableView, i.e.), see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67988863/uicollectionview-reloaddata-only-works-one-time-in-two
Two solutions were proposed to me and actually worked:
Calling collectionView.insertItems(at: indexPaths) instead of collectionView.reloadData()
Or use QLThumbnailGenerator from QuickLookThumbnailing.