Summoned with the Italian selection on the occasion of the international break, Marco Verratti returned to Paris with the Covid-19. The Italian has tested positive again and will miss PSG’s trip to Bayern. Two contaminations close together, how is that possible? Elements of answers with an infectious disease specialist.
The news fell on Friday: Marco Verratti will not be in the game for the quarter-final first leg of the PSG Champions League against Bayern on Wednesday (to be continued on RMC Sport). Absent during the Parisian defeat against Lille this Saturday, the Italian tested positive for Covid-19 and placed in isolation. Already contaminated at the end of January, the Parisian environment is once again excluded from the field because of the virus. How is it possible?
Alexandre Bleibtreu, infectious disease specialist at the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital interviewed by RMC Sport, provides his analysis: “The first thing to know is whether the positive test is associated with symptoms or not. When we have the positive test and the symptoms are that we have indeed an infection with this coronavirus again. We also know that we can be asymptomatic, so just have a positive test, without symptoms. “
The hypothesis of a residue or a variant
Alexandre Bleibtreu recalls that the players are very regularly tested and puts forward the hypothesis – impossible to verify without communication from the club – of a false positive: “In the case of athletes, it should be borne in mind that they are tested extremely often and that, like any biological test, there can be, in rare cases, false positives. I do not know the medical file or the results of Marco Verratti, the whole question is to know if this test is really a test positive and whether or not it is associated with symptoms. “
The idea that Marco Verratti has contracted a variant of the virus is also taken into account, recalls the researcher, who also does not exclude a positivity due to a “residue” of virus in the organism of the midfield.
“There are different variants of the virus circulating. The viruses are not all the same so it is possible that Marco Verratti had a first infection with the variant which circulated the most last year, the so-called ‘European’ variant. It is possible that he had a first infection and that there he was exposed to another variant which may be the Brazilian variant or the South African variant, argues Alexandre Bleibtreu. This variant may not be fully recognized by the the player’s immune system and the antibodies he may have developed and therefore have a second infection. We know that it is possible. These are quite rare cases, but they do exist. “
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