A 90-year-old Belgian woman died after a corona infection – the woman was apparently infected with two different virus variants. The phenomenon of “co-infection” has hardly been researched.
A 90-year-old woman who was infected with two different variants of the coronavirus at the same time died in Belgium. As scientists announced on Sunday, the unvaccinated woman lived alone at home, where she was looked after by a nursing service. After several falls, she was admitted to a hospital in Aalst at the beginning of March, where she tested positive for the corona virus on the same day.
Alpha and beta versions
Initially, the oxygen saturation in her blood was still good, but then the patient’s condition quickly deteriorated and she died within five days, according to a statement by the European Congress for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Tests on coronavirus variants would have shown that she was infected with both the alpha and beta variants of the coronavirus. Both variants are listed by the WHO as worrying virus variants, so-called “Variants of Concern” (VOC).
“Both variants were circulating in Belgium at the time, so it is likely that the lady was co-infected with different viruses from two different people,” said molecular biologist Anne Vankeerberghen of the OLV hospital in Aalst, who led the study.
Vankeerberghen explained whether this co-infection was responsible for the old lady’s rapid deterioration in health. Even if there have so far been no cases of such co-infections published in specialist journals, she assumes that it is “probably an underestimated phenomenon”, as not sufficiently tested for variants.
Further studies needed
In January, scientists from Brazil reported that two people had been infected with two different strains of the coronavirus at the same time, but this study, too, has not yet been published in a scientific journal. The current case report has not yet been published in any scientific journal either. An assessment by independent experts is still pending.
Data expert Rowland Kao pointed out that it is very difficult to draw general conclusions from just a single case report. Basically – especially in view of the millions of corona cases worldwide – it is to be expected that individual people will be exposed to several variants at the same time.
The Belgian study makes it clear “that further studies are needed to determine whether an infection with several questionable variants affects the clinical course of Covid-19 and whether this in any way affects the effectiveness of vaccinations,” explained the virologist Lawrence Young of the University of Warwick.
