The Department of Health (DOH) said on Wednesday, February 3, it was possible for a person to be infected with two coronavirus variants.

In a virtual press briefing aired on state-run PTV4, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that when the government taskforce on new COVID-19 variants met weeks ago, they discussed this scenario was possible, but this still needed further study.

“Weeks ago noong nag-uusap po ang taskforce on COVID-19 variants, ang ating mga eksperto ay nagsabi na rin na mayroon talagang probability o may posibilidad na magkaroon ng dalawang klaseng variant ang isang tao,” she said.

(Weeks ago when the taskforce on COVID-19 variants gathered, our experts said that there is possibility that an individual may have two variants of the virus.)

Vergeire issued this statement after researchers in Brazil said that they discovered patients infected with 2 different variants of COVID-19 simultaneously.

The study, however, has yet to be published in a scientific journal and has not been peer-reviewed.

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Vergeire also said that no other COVID-19 variants of “public significance” have been detected in PH so far except for the more infectious United Kingdom (UK) variant.

The country still has 17 known cases of the UK COVID-19 variant.

The DOH earlier said that aside from the UK variant, it was also monitoring other virus mutations found in South Africa and Malaysia.

The pandemic has infected over 103 million people globally. In the Philippines, a total of 530,118 cases have been reported as of Wednesday, with 10,942 deaths and 487,721 deaths. – Rappler.com