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A member of the medical staff works in the corridors of the Intensive Care Unit where Covid-19 patients are hospitalized at Etterbeek-Ixelles Hospital on April 6, 2021, in Brussels.
JEAN THYS | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – It is possible to be infected with two different strains of the coronavirus at the same time, experts say after the case of an unvaccinated elderly woman who was found to be infected with the alpha and beta variants of Covid-19.
The 90-year-old woman died in hospital in Belgium in March. Experts presented the case study at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases over the weekend, saying it would be the first known case of double infection and stress the need to be alert to this possibility.
The woman, whose medical history was unremarkable, experts said, was admitted to hospital in Aalst, Belgium, in early March after a series of falls. She tested positive for Covid-19 the same day, then developed respiratory symptoms that worsened rapidly. She died five days later. Genome sequencing of the woman’s samples confirmed that she was infected with both variants.
It is not known how and when the woman, who lived alone and received nursing care at home, became infected.
She had not been vaccinated against Covid-19. Studies show that the main vaccines used in the United States and Europe (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccines) are effective against the Covid variants that have emerged, avoiding most hospitalizations and deaths.
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“This is one of the first documented cases of co-infection with two worrisome variants of SARS-CoV-2,” said Dr Anne Vankeerberghen, lead author of the case report and molecular biologist at OLV Hospital Aalst, in a press release.
She said that with the two variants circulating in Belgium at the time, the woman was likely to have been co-infected by two different people.
“It is difficult to say whether the co-infection of the two worrisome variants played a role in the rapid deterioration of the patient,” added Vankeerberghen. “So far, there have been no other published cases. However, the global occurrence of this phenomenon is likely underestimated due to the limited number of tests for the variants of concern and the lack of a simple way to identify co-infections with whole genome sequencing. “
In January 2021, Brazilian scientists reported that two people were simultaneously infected with two different strains of the coronavirus – the gamma variant first identified in Brazil and a variant currently under study that was discovered in Rio Grande do Sul. – but the study has not yet been published in a scientific journal. Previous research has reported people infected with different strains of the flu.
As the coronavirus pandemic has progressed, a handful of variants have emerged that have been shown to be much more transmissible than the ‘original’ strain of Covid, which emerged in China in late 2019.
Read more: Fast-spreading delta Covid variant could have different symptoms, experts say
The alpha variant, for example, was detected in the south-east of England last fall and has continued to dominate the world. Now it is being supplanted by the extra-infectious delta variant, first identified in India in April. Another variant appeared in South Africa in December, known as the beta variant.
The World Health Organization’s latest weekly epidemiological report from July 6 indicated that the alpha variant has now been reported in 173 countries, territories or areas, and the beta variant in 122 countries. Delta has been detected in 104 countries to date.
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