BELGIAN WOMAN INFECTED BY TWO VARIANTS: EXPERTS
BRUSSELS: A 90-year-old Belgian woman who died from Covid-19 in March had contracted two variants of coronavirus at the same time, which is believed to be the first documented case of its kind, a scientific congress and Belgian media said on Sunday.
The society said she became sick with Alpha and Beta types, and her doctors said she could have contracted the infections from different people.
PARIS/VENICE: A 90-year-old woman who died after falling ill with Covid-19 was infected with both the Alpha and Beta variants of the coronavirus at the same time, researchers in Belgium said on Sunday, adding that the rare phenomenon may be underestimated.
The unvaccinated woman, who lived alone and received at-home nursing care, was admitted to the OLV Hospital in the Belgian city of Aalst after a spate of falls in March and tested positive for Covid-19 the same day. While her oxygen levels were initially good, her condition deteriorated rapidly and she died five days later.
When medical staff tested for the presence of any variants of concern they found that she was carrying both the Alpha strain, which originated in Britain, and the Beta variant first detected in South Africa.
“Both these 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 from the OLV Hospital who led the research. “Unfortunately, we don’t know how she became infected.”
Vankeerberghen said it was difficult to say whether the co-infection played a role in the fast deterioration of the patient. The research, which has not yet been submitted to a medical journal for publication, is being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.
While Vankeerberghen said in a press release that there had been “no other published cases” of similar co-infections, she added that the “phenomenon is probably underestimated”. This is because of limited testing for variants of concern, she said.
Covid variants could risk economic revival: Yellen US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was “very concerned” about the risk that new variants could pose to the global economic recovery from the pandemic.
“We are very concerned about the Delta variant and other variants that could emerge and threaten recovery,” she told reporters following a G20 meeting in Venice. “We are a connected global economy, what happens in any part of the world affects all other countries.”
In their final statement issued late on Saturday, G20 finance ministers warned that the spread of new variants was a “downside risk” to the economic recovery, while also warning of the dangers of differing paces of vaccination campaigns.
“We recognise the importance of working together to speed the process of vaccination and have the goal of wanting to vaccinate 70% of the world’s population next year,” Yellen said.
Mask-wearing expected in England beyond July 19 Britain’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi has said that people in England are expected to continue wearing masks indoors from July 19 even though the legal requirement to do so would be dropped. British PM Boris Johnson will confirm on Monday whether at all most Covid restrictions including social distancing and mandatory maskwearing will be lifted the following week as widely expected.