According to a new case report, a man in the UK was infected with COVID-19 for 505 days, more than sixteen months . This patient, since deceased, was immunocompromised. The researchers emphasize the importance of studying this type of case, as these long-lasting infections can promote the emergence of new variants.
The case of this unfortunate patient has just been presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Lisbon, Portugal. It incorporated a study of nine individuals with prolonged COVID-19 infections, whose immune systems were weakened due to organ transplantation, HIV infection, cancer or medical treatments for other diseases.
While such prolonged COVID-19 infections are rare, researchers stress the importance of studying them, as they could give rise to new SARS variants -CoV-2 . A long infection gives the virus more time to develop mutations that can escape the immune system.
“Some of these variants are more easily transmitted, cause more severe disease, or make vaccines less effective “, Details Dr Luke Blagdon Snell, Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust. “One theory put forward is that these viral variants evolve in individuals whose immune systems are weakened by disease or other medical treatments, who may have persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection. We wanted to study which mutations arise and whether variants evolve in these people with persistent infection “.
In five of these nine patients, the virus had indeed developed at least one of these mutations.
These infections persisted for 73 days on average , but two patients reportedly had persistent infection for more than a year, including one for 505 days . It is the longest COVID-19 infection reported to date. The previous record was so far held by a 47-year-old woman from Maryland (USA), who was infected for 335 days.
The individual, who suffered from several underlying conditions, had caught the virus in early 2020. For the next 72 weeks, he then chained the trips -returns to the hospital to be systematically tested positive (PCR) to COVID-19. Genetic Sequencing showed that it was the same virus causing a persistent infection, not a reinfection.
To cure his infection, the patient was reportedly treated with the antiviral drug Remdesivir, without success. According to Time, he ultimately died in hospital in 2021. Doctors did not reveal the cause of his death, but noted that the latter patient suffered from other medical conditions. Researchers hope that more treatments will be developed to help those with persistent infections beat the virus.
