A 72-year-old Dutch man died after suffering the longest recorded COVID-19 infection, spanning a staggering 613 days during which the virus mutated multiple times turning into a unique new variant, Bloomberg reported, citing research from the Amsterdam University Medical Center in Netherlands.
As per the report, the man, who was already suffering with a blood disease, got infected with COVID-19 in February 2022, leading to a compromised immune system.
“Detailed analysis of specimens collected from more than two dozen nose and throat swabs found the coronavirus developed resistance to sotrovimab, a Covid antibody treatment, within a few weeks,” scientists at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine said.
“It later acquired over 50 mutations, including some that suggested an enhanced ability to evade immune defenses,” researchers added.
The case study of the 72-year-old man will be presented by the researchers at a medical summit in Barcelona next week.
While the patient’s mutant virus wasn’t known to have infected other people, it highlights how prolonged infections enable the pandemic virus to accumulate genetic changes, potentially spawning new variants of concern.
“This case underscores the risk of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individuals,” the authors said.
“We emphasize the importance of continuing genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution in immunocompromised individuals with persistent infections," the authors added.
The report by Bloomberg further added that scientists studying genomic data collected from wastewater samples have reported evidence of individuals in the community shedding heavily mutated coronaviruses for more than four years.
Research suggests that such persistent infections may also be causing patients to experience long COVID symptoms.
I am curious about what blood disease he had also