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The Netherlands recorded the first death in the world of a person infected for the second time by SARS-CoV-2: an 89-year-old woman who also suffered from a rare form of bone marrow cancer.
According to the explanations given, this Tuesday, by the Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans, the patient needed to be hospitalized in the first wave of the new coronavirus pandemic, after developing symptoms such as high fever and strong cough, but was discharged after five days. Y he tested negative in two tests after symptoms disappear.
The Dutch patient also suffered from a disease known as Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare form of bone marrow cancer, so her immune system had been affected for months.
Two months after overcoming covid-19, the woman began new chemotherapy sessions, but began to have a fever, cough and severe shortness of breath just two days after starting treatment, for which she was readmitted to the hospital.
The patient was tested for the novel coronavirus (CRP), which was positive, but you were negative in two serological tests that were done to detect if you still had antibodies to the virus in your blood, after the first time it got infected.
Eight days after his admission, the patient’s health deteriorated dramatically and he died within two weeks.
“He certainly died of covid-19, but he was also very ill,” said Koopmans, who is involved in reinfection research conducted by the University of Oxford.
The Dutch virologist noted that There are about 25 known cases of reinfection worldwide. and, in most cases, less severe symptoms developed than during the first infection.
Therefore, scientists assume that reinfections are still “exceptions”, although Koopmans believes that “there will be more.”
For the virologist, “an important question is whether this is something typical of covid-19”, because in many cases the second infection occurred just two months after the first.
Although the researcher hopes that most people who have overcome their first infection with the new coronavirus are now protected “for a longer time”, Koopmans acknowledged that in any case, “it will not last a lifetime, because it never happened with any respiratory virus. “. “.
It is not yet clear what knowledge of these specific cases could mean for the development of a covid-19 vaccine, nor to what extent the immune system learns enough during the first infection with the new coronavirus, but the antibodies are produced naturally after an initial contagion. they seem to disappear relatively quickly in certain cases.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than one million seventy-seven thousand deaths and more than 37.5 million cases of contagion worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
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