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News > Brazil

Amazon Strain Can Reinfect and Has Spread Across Brazil: Study

  • The study indicates that the Amazon variant originated last November in the city of Manaus, one of the hardest-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas.

    The study indicates that the Amazon variant originated last November in the city of Manaus, one of the hardest-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas. | Photo: Twitter/ @MothershipSG

Published 2 March 2021
Opinion

The study reveals that between 25 percent and 61 percent of people who survived the virus could get reinfected as the variant can trick the immune system. 

A SARS-CoV-2 mutation identified in the Brazilian Amazon can reinfect former COVID-19 patients and is likely spread already across the country since travelers involuntarily transported it via airliners used by some 92,000 people until February, the latest study by the University of São Paulo (USP) and the University of Oxford revealed on Tuesday.

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The study indicates that the Amazon variant originated last November in the city of Manaus, one of the hardest-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas. The scientist concluded that this mutation called P.1 is between 1.4 and 2.2 times more transmissible than the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"Brazil | Due to sanitary collapse Santa Catarina transfers 16 patients to Espírito Santo; a state 1900kms away. The waiting line for transfer in Santa Catarina is 228 patients; yesterday 16 died waiting for covid19 stretchers."

Moreover, the study reveals that between 25 percent and 61 percent of people who survived the virus could get reinfected as the variant can trick the immune system.

"The message that the data sends is: even those who have had Covid-19 must remain cautious. The new strain is more transmissible and can infect even those who already have antibodies to the new coronavirus. This is what happened in Manaus. Most of the population already had immunity, and even then, there was a great epidemic," the coordinator of the research group Esther Sabino explained.

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