Countless people have been asked to be patient during the pandemic. When will the corona test finally be negative? But hardly anyone had to wait as long for confirmation of his recovery as the 59-year-old patient, about whom doctors from London are now reporting. The man tested positive for Sars-CoV-2 for a total of 411 days. Only then did an attempt at healing take place, as doctors led by Luke Snell from the British Guy’s & St Thomas’ clinic group in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases write.
The man had received a donor kidney before becoming infected and, as is usual in such cases, his immune system was suppressed with drugs to prevent rejection. In December 2020 he then contracted Sars-CoV-2. The symptoms soon largely disappeared, but the virus remained. With a few interruptions, his tests always showed the same result: positive.
During this time, his doctors performed a total of three detailed genetic analyzes of the virus. This genome sequencing is commonly used for pathogen surveillance and outbreak investigation. The London doctors used them several times to help individual patients.
In the case of the 59-year-old, their results confirmed that the man was indeed infected with the same virus all along. It was the original virus, sometimes called the Wuhan strain. From this, the doctors concluded that an old therapy method that is now obsolete could be appropriate. They gave the patient a mix of two neutralizing antibodies from Regeneron, which became known primarily because then-US President Donald Trump also used their drug. These antibodies no longer help against the omicron variant, but they were the solution for the British patient. As of January 2022, his tests remained negative.
The longest known infection lasted 505 days
According to the study authors, what the man went through all this time is one of the longest documented corona infections in the world. According to her, an unspecified person with the virus lived the longest, whom the London doctors also treated and whose case they had presented at a congress in the spring. Accordingly, Sars-CoV-2 was found in her for a total of 505 days before she died from an unspecified cause. In the clinic alone, this person underwent around 50 corona tests. They were all positive, Luke Snell had the BBC in spring reported.
Such tough infections are rare, yet they provide more than just startling medical anecdotes. Co-author Gaia Nebbia had also said in the spring: “Immunocompromised patients with persistent infection have a poor chance of success and new treatment strategies are urgently needed to overcome their infection. This could also prevent the emergence of variants.”
In fact, it has been found that the pathogens of permanently infected people form numerous mutations. There is speculation that the alpha and omicron variants may have originated in the bodies of patients who had been battling the virus for a very long time. The pathogen that plagued the 59-year-old British patient had accumulated a total of 13 changes over the course of his corona infection.