The long Covid is a very real phenomenon, and it affects many more people than we think. The duration of a long form of Covid-19 can be very variable, and a British patient was even infected with the disease for more than 500 days before dying.
British researchers believe they have documented the longest infection in Covid-19 ever known, in a patient who tested positive for a total of 505 days before his death. The previous record was that of a 48-year-old patient with type 2 diabetes, whose SARS-CoV-2 infection lasted 335 days, according to a study published in the journal The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Regarding this new record, the patient – who chose to remain anonymous – had started to develop respiratory symptoms in early 2020.
Although his condition improved slightly at first, he ended up being hospitalized following testing positive for Covid-19 for the 45e time. According to the doctors, the patient had a weakened immune system which prevented him from clearing the infection properly. They also clarified that it was not a very repetitive case of reinfection, since genetic sequencing showed that it was the same virus. The patient does not seem to have managed to fight the disease, since he ended up dying in 2021. For the moment, the doctors have not revealed the circumstances and the exact causes of his death.
Note that if this patient had the longest Covid-19 infection ever documented, he is not the only one to have suffered this long infection with the disease. He was also part of a study group comprising eight other individuals.
