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Researchers in Porto analyzed the case of a teenager who was infected with two different variants of the new coronavirus at the same time and who tested positive for 97 days. There are no scientific reports of identical cases.
The situation is unprecedented: in addition to being positive for more than three months, a 17-year-old girl from the Porto area was infected with two variants of SARS-CoV-2. She was treated in March at the Hospital de S. João, where she attracted the attention of doctors for being healthy, presenting a serious form of the disease and needing intensive care. He would return to the hospital two months later, again with symptoms, after an asymptomatic period. Through genetic sequencing of the virus, the doctors confirmed that it was infected with a different variant. In all, he did 19 PCR diagnostic tests, all positive.
It is not certain whether you were the victim of two infections at the same time or one immediately after the other. “Either way, co-infection or reinfection, taking into account the possibility that immunity boosted by a specific variant of SARS-CoV-2 may not protect against another variant, but may lead to a more severe pattern of disease, is extremely relevant to public health “, conclude researchers from the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (I3S) of the University of Porto, in a prepublication of the article, published on the medRxiv platform, which is being reviewed for publication.
For now, the case is unique in the scientific literature: there is no scientific report of an identical situation in the world. Although several cases of suspected reinfection have been reported around the world, including in Portugal, many fewer have been demonstrated molecularly, that is, with genetic sequencing of the virus, which is the only way to confirm reinfection by the same virus ( although in different variants) at two different heights. And within this small sample, all known cases refer to patients who have been infected, recovered, and will have been re-infected. In the case now reported, the patient had positive results for 97 days and, at one point, both variants were present in the body.
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