Artikel om situationen i Sydafrika:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-variant-in-south-africa-sparks-fear-of-faster-spread-possible-reinfection-11609358056
Citat:
At Tygerberg Hospital, the main public hospital treating coronavirus patients in Cape Town, doctors are seeing both patients and health-care workers testing positive again within three months of a previous infection, a spokeswoman said. What doctors don’t know, she said, is whether these repeat positives are due to true reinfections, or to some people carrying the virus for a longer time. Health officials are currently checking if they can isolate the new variant from the new testing samples, the spokeswoman said.
One intern doctor at another public hospital in Cape Town interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said four of her fellow interns had recently tested positive for a second time, after getting Covid-19 early in the first wave. Another doctor at a maternity hospital in another South African hot spot said she herself tested positive again this week after suffering Covid-19 symptoms for a second time since August.
A document setting out a new coronavirus testing strategy circulated Tuesday by the government of South Africa’s Western Cape province—one of the regions where the new variant is now believed to be dominant—warned of the risk of people catching Covid-19 for a second time.
“Concerns about its higher likelihood of transmissibility and its possible resistance to neutralizing antibodies, suggests that a second infection with Covid-19 might be more likely than previously predicted,” the document, which has been viewed by the Journal, says.
Citat:
Port Elizabeth and other regions where the new variant is now believed to be dominant had a high number of people with antibodies as a result of earlier coronavirus infections during the first wave. This, Dr. Bhiman said, might have contributed to making the new variant dominant over variants of the virus that lack these mutations.
Låter onekligen som att de "gamla" antikropparna inte skyddar så bra mot den nya varianten. Man tror dock att vaccinerna kommer fungera.
