South African scientists are following up on what BBC calls a ‘highly plausible hypothesis’ concerning COVID-19 variants. They suspect a relationship between immune compromised patients, and Omicron allows breathing space for extensive virus mutations. Moreover, other researchers previously observed Covid-19 can linger for many months in untreated patients who are HIV positive.
Immune Suppression and Lingering COVID Disease
‘Normally your immune system would kick a virus out fairly quickly, if fully functional,’ Prof Linda-Gayle Bekker told BBC. She heads the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town striving for rights of HIV positive people. But some of them are not taking their free medication for varying reasons, and remain immune suppressed as a result.
‘In someone where immunity is suppressed, then we see virus persisting,’ continues Prof Bekker. ‘And it doesn’t just sit around, it replicates. But as it replicates it undergoes potential mutations. And in somebody where immunity is suppressed that virus may be able to continue for many months – mutating as it goes.’
One COVID-19 patient in Cape Town tested positive for 18 months. During this time their virus underwent more than 30 genetic shifts according to laboratory results. Around a dozen similar cases occurred elsewhere in the world, according to Professor Tulio de Oliveira, who heads the team that discovered Omicron.
More about Immune Compromised Patients and Omicron
We must not allow this hypothesis to become a threat to HIV immune compromised people in our communities. That’s because a number of other conditions cause patients to become immune suppressed too. For example, the emergence of Alpha in UK has links to a person undergoing cancer treatment.
‘Diabetes, cancer, hunger, auto-immune diseases, chronic TB, obesity all link to suppressed immunity.’ So says Prof Marc Mendelson, head of infectious diseases at Cape Town’s Groote Schuur hospital. None the less, the hypothetical link between immune compromised patients and Omicron underscores the need for vaccination.
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