A newborn baby diagnosed with COVID-19 in Washington, DC, was found to have at least 51,000 times more viral particles than other young patients diagnosed with the deadly virus.
What are the details?
According to a Wednesday report from the Washington Post, experts cannot comprehend why the unnamed child – who was born in September and subsequently recovered – had such a high viral load, but later discovered the infection was a new coronavirus variant seen in several other cases.
The child was born “very sick”, according to the Post.
“Most infected children show hardly any symptoms and even the hospitalized children tend to have mild cases,” noted the outlet.
On Thursday, Insider reported that it is not clear whether this particular variant is more dangerous to children, but pointed out that the structure could make it more contagious compared to other species.
“It’s not clear how common or risky this new variant could be,” noted Insider. “The database found eight other cases of this variant in the mid-Atlantic in the US, according to a pre-print study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, of variations in the coronavirus in children.”
The outlet noted that the variant’s distinctive type of spike protein structure may “ make it more contagious. ”
“It is not clear whether this new variant explains the sheer number of virus particles detected in the child’s nose,” added the outlet.
“It could be a complete coincidence,” Roberta DeBiasi, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s National Hospital, said in a statement to the Post. “But the association is quite strong. If you see a patient who has exponentially more virus and it is a completely different variant, then that is probably related.”
DeBiasi added that she could not conclude anything about the mutation from just one case, but the Post reported that researchers found evidence that a “variant with a mutation called N679S is circulating in the mid-Atlantic.”
What else?
The Post reported that since February 11, more than 3 million American children have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic.
“The biggest peaks have occurred since mid-November, when the number of cases increased by 100,000 to 200,000 every week,” the paper said. “But the country’s sparse genomic sequencing has focused almost exclusively on adults.”
Harvard researcher Adrienne Randolph said the need to expand sequencing is immediate.
“A few hospitals that say their cases are more serious in children doesn’t mean this is a problem nationally,” she explains. “But we have to investigate. With new variants, it may be that some of these children are infected with it.”
Alan Beggs, a genomics expert at Boston Children’s Hospital, said the general “take-home message” is that the country is “performing poorly at identifying worrying changes in the evolving virus.”
“This is just more evidence that needs to change,” added Beggs.