Also still waiting to see the first documented case of someone fully recovered from the virus being hospitalized from one of these new so-called 'variants'.
Virus Variant in Brazil Infected Many Who Had Already Recovered From Covid-19
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/health/covid-19-coronavirus-brazil-variant.html...The researchers tested these possibilities by tracking P.1 from its earliest samples in December. By early January, it made up 87 percent of samples. By February it had taken over completely.
Combining the data from genomes, antibodies and medical records in Manaus, the researchers concluded that P.1 conquered the city thanks not to luck but biology: Its mutations helped it spread. Like B.1.1.7, it can infect more people, on average, than other variants can. They estimate it is somewhere between 1.4 and 2.2 times more transmissible than other lineages of coronaviruses.
But it also gets an edge from mutations that let it escape antibodies from other coronaviruses. They estimate that in 100 people who were infected with non-P.1 lineages in Manaus last year, somewhere between 25 and 61 of them could have been reinfected if they were exposed to P.1 in Manaus.
The researchers found support for this conclusion in an experiment in which they mixed P.1 viruses with antibodies from Brazilians who had Covid-19 last year. They found that the effectiveness of their antibodies dropped sixfold against P.1 compared with other coronaviruses. That drop might mean that at least some people would be vulnerable to new infections from P.1.
Dr. Faria said “an increasing body of evidence†suggests that most cases in the second wave were the result of reinfections....
