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BRASILIA – Researchers in southern Brazil said they have discovered patients infected with two different variants of the new coronavirus simultaneously, reflecting concern about the growing number of mutations in the country.
The researchers, who published their findings Wednesday on the medical website medRxiv, said their study would be the first in the world to confirm co-infection with two variants of the coronavirus. The study has not yet been published in a scientific journal and has not been peer-reviewed.
The patients, both in their 30s, were infected in late November with the P.2 variant of the coronavirus identified in Rio, also known as the B.1.1.28 lineage, and simultaneously tested positive for a second variant of the virus.
His symptoms were reportedly mild, with a dry cough in one case and a cough, sore throat and headache in the second. They did not require hospitalization.
The cases underscore the number of variants that may already be circulating in Brazil and raise concern among scientists that the coexistence of two variants in the same body could accelerate the mutations of new variants of the coronavirus.
“These co-infections can generate combinations and generate new variants even faster than what has been happening,” said the study’s principal investigator, Fernando Spilki, a virologist at Feevale University in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
“It would be another evolutionary pathway for the virus,” Spilki added.
The new variants carry the risk of increased transmissibility and possible resistance to the vaccines currently being developed.
Mutations found in variants of the coronavirus in Britain and a more recent one in the Brazilian state of Amazonas appear to have made the virus more contagious.
The cases point to the significant viral load circulating in Brazil because co-infection can only occur when different viruses are transmitted in large numbers, Spilki said.
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