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A newborn baby diagnosed with COVID-19 in Washington, DC, contained at least 51,000 times more viral particles than other young patients diagnosed with the deadly virus.
What are the details?
Experts cannot understand why the unnamed child – who was born in September and then recovered – had such a high viral load, but later determined that the unnamed child, according to a report released by the Washington Post on Wednesday, said. infection was a new variant of coronavirus seen in several other cases.
The child, according to the Post, was born “very sick”.
“Most infected children barely show symptoms and even children in hospital tend to have mild cases,” the outlet noted.
On Thursday, Insider reported that it was not clear whether this particular variant was more dangerous for children, but pointed out that its structure may make it more infectious compared to other strains.
“It’s unclear how common or risky this new variant could be,” Insider noted. “The database found eight more cases of this variant in the US mid-Atlantic region, according to a preprinted study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, on coronavirus variations in children.”
The outlet noted that the variant’s distinctive type of spike protein structure “may make it more infectious.”
“It is not clear whether this new variant explains the large number of viral particles detected in the infant’s nose,” the newspaper added.
“It could be a complete coincidence,” Roberta DeBiasi, head of infectious diseases at the National Children’s Hospital, said in a statement. “But the association is pretty strong. If you see a patient who has exponentially more virus and it’s a completely different variant, it’s probably related.”
DeBiasi added that she couldn’t conclude anything about the mutation from a single case, but the Post reported that the researchers found evidence that a “variant with a mutation called N679S could circulate in the mid-region. Atlantic”.
What else?
The Post reported that as of February 11, more than 3 million American children have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic.
“The biggest increases have been since mid-November, when cases have increased at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 per week,” the outlet noted. “But the country’s little genomic sequencing has focused almost exclusively on adults.”
Adrienne Randolph, a researcher at Harvard, said the need to expand sequencing is immediate.
“A couple of hospitals saying their cases are more serious in children does not mean it is a national problem,” she explained. “But we need to investigate. With new variants, some of these children may have been infected with it.”
Alan Beggs, who is a genomics expert at Boston Children’s Hospital, said the overall “take home message” is that the country “is failing to identify worrying changes in the course of the virus.”
“This is just more evidence that needs to change,” Beggs added.
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