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A health worker with safety equipment.
Oliver Berg / Picture Alliance via Getty Images
- Months after recovering from Covid-19, a A 58-year-old man has been infected with the variant of the coronavirus discovered for the first time in South Africa.
- The man tested negative for Covid-19 twice in December 2020, however, he was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with the 501Y.V2 variant.
- He is currently in critical condition with a ventilator.
Doctors in France are treating a critically ill patient infected with the 501Y.V2 variant of the coronavirus, first discovered in South Africa, four months after he recovered from Covid-19, in what the study authors said was the first case of its kind.
The 58-year-old had a history of asthma and initially tested positive for Covid-19 in September when he presented to medical staff with a 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 diagnosed with the South African variant.
The patient’s condition worsened and he is currently in “critical condition” on a ventilator.
“This is, to our knowledge, the first description of reinfection with South Africa [501Y.V2 coronavirus variant] causing severe Covid-19, four months after a first mild infection, “said the authors of a study published this week in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The 501Y.V2 variant of the coronavirus emerged late last year in South Africa and immediately caused alarm among disease specialists.
It has eight key mutations, one of which affects the spike protein of the virus, making it more efficient at binding to human cells, and therefore more infectious.
Vaccine makers Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna say that their mRNA vaccines retain their effectiveness against the 501Y.V2 variant of the coronavirus and other variants that emerged last year in Britain.
However, a study last week showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine was unable to prevent mild and moderate cases of infection from the 501Y.V2 variant of the coronavirus found in South Africa.
“The impact of 501Y.V2 mutations on the effectiveness of vaccines developed from older SARS-CoV-2 strains is still unknown,” said the authors of the reinfection study.
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