Dutch scientists reported that a 72-year-old patient who died recently did not recover from COVID-19 for 613 days. As a result of the analysis of the old man’s gene sequence, it was revealed that the virus in his body had mutated 50 times.
Recently, scientists reported a case of what is believed to be the longest known COVID-19 infection.
The case, reported by infectious disease experts at the University Medical Center of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, describes a 72-year-old, immunocompromised man who recently died as having been ill with COVID-19 for 613 days.
The man remained sick for so long that the virus evolved into another virus that evaded a new immunity.
Reportedly, the old man received more than one COVID-19 vaccine, but his immune system could not mount a sufficiently protective response against the virus, which is frequently seen in elderly people and people with weak immune systems.
People with weak immune systems survive longer
People with compromised immune systems are at a much higher risk of contracting COVID-19 and are 13 times more likely to be hospitalized, even if vaccinated three times.
“The duration of SARS-CoV-2 infection in this described case is extreme, but long-term infections are much more common in patients with weakened immune systems than in the general population,” said the statement of the University Medical Center of Amsterdam.
The team will present the case at the 2024 European Global Congress on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases later this month.
The virus has undergone 50 different mutations
Routine genomic investigation revealed that the man was first infected with the “Omicron BA.1.17” variant in February 2022. But after a few weeks of treatment, the virus mutated to become resistant to a neutralizing antibody treatment.
Genomic sequencing of 27 nose and throat samples collected between February 2022 and September 2023 showed that the man’s virus had accumulated an additional 50 mutations compared to variants circulating at the time.
Researchers explained that the man’s highly mutated variant has not been documented to be transmitted to the rest of the population.
