CDC: COVID-19 variant reinfects second patient in Brazil

BOSTON — In some respects, COVID-19 has proven a surprising bug. Remember all that talk of its dissipation in hot weather? Tell that to residents of Florida, Arizona, Texas and California, states that added hundreds of thousands of cases to their totals in epic surges last summer.

But in one important respect, COVID-19 may be just like any other coronavirus: it confers immunity after infection that doesn’t appear to last forever.

The latest evidence for that comes, once again, out of Brazil. For the second time in three months, researchers there documented a COVID-19 reinfection, once again, by a variant different than the strain causing the patient’s first infection.

The research appears in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases publication. The patient, a 45-year-old health care executive, was exposed to COVID-19 in the workplace.

She first fell ill in May and recovered from a mild illness. Five months later, she got sick again with an illness still classified as ‘mild’ but that was worse in terms of symptoms and duration than the first infection.

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A sequence of the causative virus from infection number two revealed it had an E484K mutation to the spike protein, the same mutation found on a Brazilian reinfection discovered back in December. The E484K mutation is known to be present on at least three COVID-19 variants, including one, B.1.1.28.2, that is distributed through North America.

“It’s a worry that a number of us who do viral surveillance had for a while, that with these new variants coming up that we may see cases of reinfection,” said Dr. Beth Thielen, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “I think the good news is that this patient who was reinfected did not become severely ill with either episode, including the second episode.”

Still, the news comes as the CDC warns variants are on the rise in the U.S. and could become dominant by spring. At the same time, some states have long-range plans to lift crowd-size and even mask-wearing restrictions.

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“We need to balance people’s mental health and the appreciation that this has been a long slog for almost a year now with, I think, the fact, the real concerns that this could still flare up again,” Dr. Thielen said.

Thus, restaurant dining and social gatherings are not on her agenda for now.

“And that’s driven by the fact that I just don’t feel comfortable that it’s safe at this point,” she said. “I would really encourage people to just give it a little bit more time of cautious behaviors. Let’s get more vaccines out; let’s kind of get a better handle on how these variants are behaving. It’s coming, I hope soon, but perhaps not quite at this moment.”

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