Covid-19 was found in a UK patient with a very impaired immune system for over a year and a half, highlighting the significance of shielding vulnerable persons from the coronavirus.
Because hardly everyone gets tested, especially frequently like in this case, there is no way to tell if it was the longest-lasting Covid-19 infection.
Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, an infectious disease expert at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, said that at 505 days, “it certainly seems to be the longest reported infection.”
Their research looked into which mutations emerge in people who have had exceptionally lengthy infections and if variants change. It involved nine patients who had been infected for at least eight weeks and had tested positive for the virus. All of them had impaired immune systems due to organ transplants, HIV, cancer, or other disorders. For purposes of privacy, none of them were named.
According to repeated tests, their illnesses lasted for an average of 73 days. Two of them had the infection for over a year. Previously, the longest-known instance that was confirmed using a PCR test lasted 335 days.
Persistent Covid-19 is a unique kind of Covid that differs from long Covid.
