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A 90-year-old Belgian woman has died after being infected with two different strains of COVID-19 at the same time, scientists revealed on Sunday.
His case was the first documented of a patient infected with two strains, although the “phenomenon is probably underestimated,” one of the leading researchers said, according to Agence France-Presse.
The patient, who was not vaccinated, fell ill in March with the alpha and beta strains of the virus, which were first identified in the UK and South Africa, respectively, according to scientists at the European Congress on clinical microbiology and infectious diseases.
The woman was hospitalized in Aalst near Brussels after suffering falls, and tests determined she had contracted the two variants, likely from different people, the BBC reported.
“Both variants circulated [in March] in Belgium, ”said Anne Vankeerberghen, Principal Investigator and Molecular Biologist.
“So it’s likely that this woman was infected by two different people with two variants of the virus. Unfortunately, we don’t know how this infection happened, ”the scientist said.
The patient’s condition continued to deteriorate and she died five days after her diagnosis, German media outlet DW News reported.
Vankeerberghen said such a double infection may not be that rare.
But she said it’s still not clear whether the phenomenon played a role in the patient’s rapidly worsening condition.
Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick who was not involved in the research, said the scientists’ findings were not surprising, the BBC reported.
“Detecting two dominant variants of concern in a single person is no surprise – they could have been transmitted by a single infected person or by contact with several infected people,” he said.
With post wires
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