An unpublished COVID-19 case recently showed a 90-year-old unvaccinated woman, after contracting the virus this spring in Europe, was found to have been infected with two variants simultaneously.
FOX10 reported the patient's case was presented and discussed at the European Congress on Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases or ECCMID as part of a Belgian study.
The woman reported at the hospital after a series of falls and tested positive for COVID-19 too, the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
When the patient was admitted to the hospital, she had a good health condition and did not exhibit any signs of respiratory distress. Nonetheless, her health started to drop fast, and she died five days after.
2 COVID-19 Variants at the Same Time
Following her death, researchers found the old woman had been infected by two different COVID-19 variants, the United Kingdom or UK Strain and the South African strain. The doctors ran her initial test to look for strains of concern with PCR testing.
Researchers said they believe this is "the first documented case of its kind," even though rare, that similar dual infections occur worldwide.
EurekAlert! reported that according to the study's lead author, Dr. Anne Vankeerberghen, a molecular biologist from the OLV Hospital in Aalst, Belgium, where the 90-year-old received care to date, there have been no published cases of such an occurrence.
Nevertheless, the worldwide occurrence of this phenomenon is perhaps underestimated because of limited testing for variants of concern and the lack of a simple way to determine co-infections with whole-genome sequencing.
Both the variants, the lead author, explained, were circulating in Belgium at the time, so it is possible that the old woman was co-infected with different viruses from two different people. Regrettably, she added, they do not know how the patient became infected.
The UK and South African Variants
Both the UK and South African variants, also known as the "alpha and beta" variants respectively, are circulating too, in the United States, a similar The Press Stories report specified.
These are two of the four variants of concern in the country at present, as designated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The other two variants of concern in the country presently are the delta variant, initially detected in India, and the gamma variant initially detected in Brazil and Japan.
Earlier last week, the CDC forecasted the delta variant has now turned out to be the dominant strain of the virus in the US.
National genomic surveillance data presented the delta strain accounting for 30.4 percent of cases in the two-week period that ended last month. The CDC said it believes the number will grow to 51.7 percent for the two-week period that ended early this month.
Delta Variant Accounting 80 Percent of COVID-19 Cases
During the COVID-19 White House briefing, the CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that the percentage is even higher in some parts of the US.
For instance, in parts of the Midwest and Upper Mountain states, the early sequence data of CDC suggests the delta variant accounts for roughly 80 percent of cases.
It remains unclear if the delta variant is more fatal compared to other strains, although the CDC noted increased communicability with the delta variant and the possibility for it to make certain monoclonal antibody treatments less effective.
Nevertheless, all three authorized vaccinations in the country have been discovered to be effective against the COVID-19 strains.
As of yesterday, the CDC is saying more than 67 percent of adults in the US have had at least one shot of their COVID-19 vaccine. Almost 160 million Americans have been fully vaccinated.
A related report is shown on WION's YouTube video below:
Read also: COVID-19 Vaccines: Almost 280,000 Lives Saved, Over a Million Hospitalizations Preempted in the US
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