Patient infected with Covid for 411 days is finally cured

A kidney transplant patient who suffered with Covid-19 for more than a year has finally been cured.

The patient, aged 59, tested positive after receiving a new kidney in December 2020. The drugs he needed to prevent his body from rejecting the organ weakened his immune system and he couldn’t shake off the virus. He tested positive intermittently until January 2022, despite receiving three vaccination shots.

Perplexed doctors conducted a genetic analysis of the virus. They found he had contracted a variant of the original virus from Wuhan, which was dominant in the UK until late 2020, according to details of the case published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The patient’s own virus also underwent multiple mutations.

Doctors analysing the variant used the results to prescribe a bespoke treatment for his strain. Two months later — a total of 411 days after he first tested positive — the infection had cleared up.

“Some new variants of the virus are resistant to all the antibody treatments available in the UK and Europe,” said lead researcher Luke Snell, an infectious disease expert at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London, who specialises in the evolution of pathogens.

“Some people with weakened immune systems are at risk of severe illness and becoming persistently infected. We are working to understand the best way to treat them.”

The longest recorded Covid-19 infection is 505 days, according to the journal. The patient did not survive.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com