Longest Covid Infection Lasted More Than 16 Months

The unidentified person suffered from various physical issues and died in hospital in 2021. According to the London doctors, persistent infections like these are rare. The infection is usually cleared by itself, but the patient in question had a severely weakened immune system. Experts suggest that chronic infections like these need to be studied in order to better understand Covid and the risks it poses. In early 2020, the patient became infected with Covid. They were experiencing symptoms, and a PCR test confirmed the virus.

Over the next 72 weeks, they were in and out of the hospital several times for normal examinations and treatment. They tested positive on each time - around 50 in total - indicating that they still possessed Covid. According to the experts from King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, comprehensive lab research confirmed that it was the same, persistent infection rather than many bouts. Even after being given antiviral medicines, the patient was unable to overcome the infection. This is in contrast to "long Covid," in which the virus is removed from the body but symptoms persist.

Dr Luke Blagdon Snell is one of the doctors who will report the findings at a medical conference, the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. According to the BBC, he stated: "These were throat swab tests that were all positive. There was never a negative test result for the patient. And we know it was a single continuous infection because the genetic signature - the information we obtained from sequencing the viral genome - was unique and consistent in that patient."

Prolonged infections are rare but essential, as per the researchers, since they may give rise to novel Covid variations - albeit this did not happen in this case. "The virus is still adapting to the human host when people are sick for a long period," Dr. Snell stated. It may present a possibility for Covid to acquire new mutations." Some of the individuals we evaluated had mutations similar to those seen in some of the variations of concern." He emphasised that none of the nine patients examined had produced a new harmful variant. He said that someone with a persistent infection may not be contagious to others.