Date Published: 02/03/2021
ARCHIVED - Probable reinfection of Brazilian Covid variant in Spain as confirmed cases rise to 17
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The patients include a "probable reinfection” while 14 cases of the Rio de Janeiro variant have also been identified in Spain
Further worrying news regarding the mutations or variants of SARS-Cov-2 has been made public by Spain’s Ministry of Health, who report that a “probable re-infection” has been detected in a case concerning the Brazilian variant.
The case is part of an outbreak of 11 cases of the Brazilian P.1 variant, an episode which brings the total of known infections involving this mutation in Spain to 17. At the same time, the number of cases in which the South African variant has been detected has risen to 54 across the country, while the “British” or “Kent” variant continues to spread: the latest reports from the different regions of Spain suggest that the British mutation accounts for as many as 64 per cent of cases in some areas, but as few as 4 per cent in others.
The Coordination Centre for Health Alerts and Emergencies stresses that prevention measures such as facemasks, social distancing, hand-washing and ventilating premises are equally effective against the strains so far identified, but research is still on-going into a total of seven strains of coronavirus which represent a current or future threat in terms of contagiousness or virulence. These are the mutations known as B.1.1.7 (the British variant), B.1.351 (the South African variant) and P.1 (the Brazilian variant), all three of which are relatively well-known, as well as others such as P.2 (first identified in Río de Janeiro), which has been found in 14 cases in Spain and which may be resistant to the response of the human body’s immune system.
There has also been one case confirmed in Spain of the B.1.525 (or “Nigerian”) variant, but none so far of the strains named B.1.429 (or “Californian”), which is known to be highly contagious, or VOC 202102/02, described as being similar to B.1.1.7.
Of the 17 cases of the P.1 Brazilian strain in Spain, two have been isolated and the others are grouped in three outbreaks, one of them consisting of 11 cases. In this outbreak no direct link with Brazil has been identified and one of the patients is the “probable re-infection”.
The 14 cases in which the P.2 Río de Janeiro strain has been identified include 9 in a hospital outbreak and a further three belonging to the same family group.
New mutated variants of Covid are frequent, experts state, and the main concern is whether the mutations affect the gene which codifies Protein S, as this is the “spike” targeted by vaccines. It is for this reason that the Brazilian variant is especially worrying as it presents no fewer than 12 mutations in the spike protein.