London: In what is being said to be the longest reported COVID-19 infection, a patient in the UK passed away after battling the coronavirus for 17 months during which he got infected by 10 variants of the virus, including Omicron.
According to a report in British publication Metro, the unidentified patient with a severely weakened immune system first tested positive for the virus in 2020 and finally succumbed 505 days later.
“It certainly seems to be the longest reported infection,” Dr Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, told AP.
Dr Snell’s team has been researching the evolution of mutations and whether variants evolve in people with super long infections, AP reported.
Nine patients, who were part of the study, tested COVID-positive for at least eight weeks. All of them had weakened immune systems due to diseases like HIV or cancer, or underwent organ transplants. The infection lingered for 73 days, on an average.
Four of the nine patients died, two recovered from COVID-19 without any treatment and two required treatment to fight off the virus.
The ninth patient is still battling coronavirus for 412 days.
“In long COVID, it’s generally assumed the virus has been cleared from your body but the symptoms persist. With persistent infection, it represents ongoing, active replication of the virus,” Dr Snell said.
The team will present several examples of persistent cases of COVID-19 at an infectious disease meeting in Portugal this weekend.
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