Critical patient after reinfection with S.African variant: study

Doctors in France are treating a seriously ill patient infected with the South African coronavirus variant, four months after he recovered from COVID-19, in what the study authors said was the first such case.

The 58-year-old man had a history of asthma and initially tested positive for COVID-19 in September, when he came to the medical team with fever and shortness of breath.

The symptoms persisted for only a few days, and the man tested negative for COVID-19 twice in December 2020.

However, he was admitted to the hospital in January and was diagnosed with the South African variant.

The patient’s condition has worsened and he is currently in a “critical condition” on the ventilator.

“This is, as far as we know, the first description of reinfection with South Africa (variant) causing severe COVID-19, four months after a first mild infection,” said the authors of a study published this week in the newspaper Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The coronavirus variant 501Y.V2 emerged at the end of last year in South Africa and immediately raised alarm among disease experts.

It has eight major mutations, one of which affects the virus’s spike protein, making it more effective at binding to human cells and therefore more infectious.

Vaccine manufacturers Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna say their mRNA vaccines remain effective against South African variants and another that emerged last year in Britain.

However, a study last week showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine failed to prevent mild and moderate cases of infection from the South African variant.

“The impact of 501Y.V2 mutations on the effectiveness of vaccines developed based on previous strains of SARS-CoV-2 is still unknown,” said the authors of the reinfection study.

© 2021 AFP