The rapidly spreading coronavirus has created a atmosphere of fear and panic among people's minds. Countries all over the world are facing this covid crisis. Meanwhile, shocking information has come to light about the virus from South Africa. A 36-year-old HIV-positive woman was found to be covid infected for atleast 216 days.
While she was infected, the virus in her body mutated 32 mutations times, a new study found.
According to the South China Morning Post, the spike protein of the virus also underwent 13 mutations. Most vaccines work by identifying spike proteins.The coronaviruses gathered 13 mutations to the spike protein, which is known to help the virus escape the immune response, and 19 other mutations that could change the behavior of the virus. It is not clear whether the mutations she carried were passed on to others, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A research on this has been published in the pre-print journal medRxiv. In the study, author Tulio de Oliveira said that if more such cases were found, it would be possible to understand that HIV infection could be the source of a new variant.
Corona virus can stay in patients for a long time. This gives the virus a chance to mutate. The author said that perhaps no one understood this case because the woman had fewer symptoms after the initial treatment. However, the virus was in her body. According to reports, the case came to light when the woman participated in a study of 300 HIV-positive people. It also revealed that there were four other people besides the woman who had had covid virus in their body for more than a month. Coronavirus has long been found to affect people who have a weakened immune system.
The finding could be of particular importance for Africa, which had about 26 million people living with HIV in 2020. The WHO on Friday warned that a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases could turn into a continentwide third wave of COVID-19.