A patient who had contracted Covid-19 and from which he had recovered was re-infected with the Sars-CoV-2 variant detected in South Africa, called 501.V2. This is what a team of French researchers reveals in a study published this Wednesday, February 10 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A patient cured … then reinfected a few months later
The team of Prof. Jean-Damien Ricard, head of the intensive medicine and intensive care unit at the Louis-Mourier AP-HP hospital in Colombes in Hauts-de-Seine, reports the first serious case of a patient re-infected with the South African variant of SARS-CoV-2, a few months after a first infection with the classic strain of the coronavirus. This is a 58-year-old patient. In September 2020, he was admitted to the Louis-Mourier AP-HP hospital for a mild Covid-19 infection (moderate fever and respiratory discomfort) and without any particular medical history. He healed quickly and spontaneously within a few days. In January 2021, he was again admitted to the emergency room for breathing difficulties accompanied by fever. His PCR test is positive and virus sequencing shows the presence of mutations characteristic of the 501.V2 variant, identified in South Africa. Seven days later, the patient had to be intubated because he developed an extremely serious acute respiratory distress syndrome. When the study was published, its vital prognosis was still engaged.
Insufficient immunity following the first infection
“The SARS-CoV-2 serology at the start of hospitalization was positive, suggesting that the immunity developed after the first infection did not prevent reinfection by the South African variant”, reports l ‘AP-HP in a February 12 press release. In other words, the immunity developed following the first infection with SARS-CoV-2 was not sufficient to prevent a second infection. However, Professor Jean-Damien Ricard, head of the intensive medicine and resuscitation service at Louis-Mourier hospital, told Franceinfo that this did not call into question the treatments or their effectiveness: “even if the second infection was much more severe than the first, it remains similar to that of other serious forms “known of the coronavirus. To treat this patient a second time, “the same treatment regimen is used” as for the first infection.
