Can the same person be infected with two different variants? Results in Belgium come this Sunday to sow doubt. Belgian researchers have in fact reported on the unprecedented case of a nonagenarian who died in March of Covid-19, after having been infected simultaneously with the Alpha and Beta variants. A phenomenon according to them undoubtedly “underestimated”.
“This is one of the first documented cases of co-infection with two worrying variants of SARS-CoV-2,” said molecular biologist Anne Vankeerberghen, author of the study, quoted in a press release from the European Congress of Microbiology. clinical and infectious diseases (ECCMID). On March 3, 2021, this 90-year-old woman, with no particular medical history and unvaccinated, was admitted to a hospital in the Belgian city of Aalst after a series of falls, according to this case study, presented to Congress and review by the peers of its selection committee.
Tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival, the nonagenarian initially presented “a good level of oxygen saturation and no signs of respiratory distress”, according to the ECCMID. However, she “quickly developed worsening respiratory symptoms and died five days later.” According to the biologist from the OLV hospital in Aalst, “it is difficult to say whether the co-infection with two variants played a role in the rapid deterioration of the patient’s condition”.
Two more cases reported in Brazil
During extensive testing and through sequencing, the hospital discovered that she had been infected with two strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19. The two variants Alpha and Beta “were circulating in Belgium at the time (March 2021), so it is likely that the lady was co-infected by two different people. Unfortunately, we don’t know how it got infected, ”continued Dr Vankeerberghen.
To date, “there have been no other published cases” of co-infections with two variants, indicated the researcher, who considers “crucial” to further sequence and study this phenomenon. Two cases of people infected with two different variants present in Brazil were reported in January in a study, which has “not yet been published by a scientific journal,” according to ECCMID.