PARIS – A 90-year-old woman who died after falling ill with Covid-19 was infected with both alpha and beta forms of the coronavirus at the same time, Belgian researchers said on Sunday, an underestimated rare event. is.
The unvaccinated woman, who lived alone and received nursing care at home, was admitted to OLV Hospital in the Belgian city of Alst after a fall in March and tested positive for Covid-19 the same day.
While her oxygen levels were good initially, her condition rapidly deteriorated and she died five days later.
When medical staff tested for the presence of any form of anxiety they found she was carrying both the alpha strain, which originated in Britain, and the beta version first detected in South Africa.
“Both of these types were circulating in Belgium at the time, so it is likely that the woman was co-infected with different viruses from two different people,” said Anne Venkerbergen, a molecular biologist at OLV Hospital who led the research.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know how she got infected.”
Vankerbergen said it is difficult to say whether co-infection played a role in the patient’s rapid deterioration.
The research, which has yet to be submitted to a medical journal for publication, is being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
While Vankerbergen said in a press release that there were “no other published cases” of similar co-infection, he added that “the incidence is probably an underestimate.”
This is because of limited testing for variants of concern, she said, calling for increased use of rapid PCR testing to detect known variant mutations.
In January, scientists in Brazil reported that two people had been simultaneously infected with two different strains of the coronavirus, but the study has not yet been published in a scientific journal.
Responding to the research, Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick, said it was no surprise to find an individual infected with more than one strain.
He said, “This study highlights the need for more studies to determine whether infection with multiple variants of concern affects the clinical course of COVID-19 and whether it is in any way linked to vaccination.” compromises its efficacy,” he said.