Coronavirus passports 'should be mandatory' says Gale
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A Russian woman known as “Patient S” had coronavirus for nearly 11 months, making her the longest Covid sufferer. During the months she was infected, the pathogen was able to mutate 40 times, according to scientists.
The woman was suffering late-stage cancer when she first got infected in April and suffered two severe bouts of illness.
Scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow compared the way the virus evolved inside her body with a gym.
Professor Georgii Bazykin said: “Consider the Sars-Cov-2 variants of concern that have recently spread widely and gained notoriety.
“When such a variant originates, it often accumulates multiple mutations rapidly, just as it does when evolving in immunosuppressed individuals.
“This has led people to suggest that such individuals can be a sort of a gym for the virus where it gains the traits needed to infect humans better.
“While the virus we studied probably never got out of the gym, our findings imply that the gym equipment is more diverse than we thought.”
Following the mutations, the virus was able to survive better and reproduce faster.
Some of the variations included changes to the spike protein, which the pathogen uses to access cells.
The virus was also able to change its surface proteins as if to escape antibodies.
However, the sufferer was so immunocompromised that there were no antibodies in her system.
Evgeniia Alekseeva, the joint first author of the paper, said: “This was puzzling.
”Why would the virus hide from something that is not there? And why would it camouflage its parts that antibodies cannot see anyway?”
Experts believe the pathogen may have been mutating to escape T-cells, a second part of the immunity system.
The research was published on the website Research Square.
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