London: It’s been close to two years since COVID-19 stopped being a menace to humanity. However, it brings back painful memories whenever news of rare cases surface.
Just like the recent revelation that a man suffered from coronavirus infection for a staggering 613 days before passing away in September 2023.
According to a study by researchers of Amsterdam University Medical Center, an unnamed Dutch man suffered the longest recorded COVID-19 infection.
The 72-year-old man was already suffering from a blood disease when he got infected with COVID-19 in February 2022. That led to a compromised immune system.
The researchers found that the virus mutated over 50 times in the patient’s body, and finally transformed into an ultra-mutated variant, reported TIME.
The Dutch patient’s 20-month-long COVID surpassed the 505-day infection of a British man who also finally succumbed to his illness. Despite receiving multiple COVID-19 vaccine doses, the Dutch man contracted the Omicron variant which the patient’s immune system failed to keep up.
“This case underscores the risk of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individuals. We emphasise the importance of continuing genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution in immunocompromised individuals with persistent infections,” the authors of the study said.
The case study of the 72-year-old man will be presented at the ESCMID Global Congress in Barcelona next week.