A patient who tested positive for Covid-19 remained so for 16 months until his death, the longest known case of infection, according to a study devoted to the evolution of the virus in immunocompromised patients.
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The patient, whose identity has not been released, had first tested positive in mid-2020 and had breathing problems. He remained positive on all tests (about 45) until his death 505 days later, Dr. Gaia Nebbia, co-author of the study, told AFP Friday.
Minimum positives for two weeks
This is the longest-known case of Covid infection, according to a press release from the European Congress of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, which will be held in Lisbon from April 23 to 26, where the research will be presented.
The study, conducted by researchers from King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital London, looked at nine immunocompromised patients with ongoing infection with the virus between March 2020 and December 2021. All were positive for at least eight weeks, two were positive for more than a year. Of the nine patients, four died and four eventually recovered. In early 2022, one last patient was infected, 412 days after he first tested positive.
Study the mutations of the virus
†Immunocompromised patients with persistent infection have little chance of survival and new treatment strategies are urgently needed to terminate their infection.“was alarmed by Gaia Nebbia. The aim of the study was to study the mutations of the virus in infected patients for months. In one of the patients, the virus carried 10 mutations that existed individually in several major variants, including Alpha, Gamma and Omicron.
†We wanted to characterize viral evolution in these individuals that could accumulate mutations during their ongoing infection. This is one of the hypotheses for the emergence of variantsexplains Gaia Nebbia.
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She points out that mutations of the virus were observed in five of the nine patients. According to estimates from the National Statistics Office published Friday, 38.5 million people in England had Covid between the end of April 2020 and mid-February 2022, or 70% of the population.
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