The patient was 72 years old and had coronavirus for 613 days. The case could be the longest in the world.
A 72-year-old man was infected with Covid-19 for two years. The patient entered the Amsterdam University Medical Centerin Netherlands, in February 2022 and was diagnosed with coronavirus. This remained the case for 613 dayswhere the virus began to mutate in his body.
The case became known because next week the world conference of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. The event will present the patient’s case, which could become the longest in the world.
Covid-19: what was the infection like that lasted 613 days
coronavirus-covid-virus
During the number of days the patient was sick, accumulated at least 50 genetic resources of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. According to the research that will be presented at the world conference, which was carried out by Dr. Magda Vergouwe, The old man already suffered from a disorder that affected their antibody production.
In February 2022, he entered the Amsterdam University Medical Center with coronavirus and, after having received multiple vaccines and treatments with antibodies, his immune system was unable to control the infection. In this way, in the following 20 months the virus mutated 50 times inside his body and gave rise to a variant “highly mutated“.
Covid-19 for 613 days: the case set off alarms
The doctoral candidate at the Center for Experimental and Molecular Medicine (CEMM) Amsterdam warned that the case highlights the importance of tracking down immunocompromised patients, whose bodies could generate new variantss that could be more resistant to vaccines and treatments.
“This case highlights the risk of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individualsas unique viral variants of SARS-CoV-2 may arise due to extensive intra-host evolution,” Vergouwe explained.
“We emphasize the importance of continuing genomic surveillance of the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in immunocompromised people with persistent infections, given the possible threat to public health of the possible introduction of viral escape variants into the community,” the doctor added.
In addition, he referred to the duration of the infection and maintained that it is “extreme”, but that prolonged infections in immunocompromised patients are much more common compared to the general population.
In this way, the authors of the study highlight the importance of implement early diagnosis strategies to detect these cases in a timely manner and take the necessary preventive measures.
Source: Ambito
