Physicians from Kings College London and Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust report that after an extensive analysis they have discovered that a patient that was treated with COVID-19 has had detectable levels of the pathogen for over a year and a half now, or 505 days. With other underlying health conditions (comorbidities), the unnamed patient eventually died in the hospital last year.

While extensive SARS-CoV-2 infection is exceedingly rare given most people clear the virus, the decedent’s immune system was severely challenged. As reported recently by Michelle Roberts with the BBC, the need to study chronic infections such as this case can help inform physicians and researchers about the nature of COVID-19, including mitigation of risks.

The patient, again now deceased, tested positive for COVID-19 about 50 times, yet it was determined that they always had the same base infection.

Presenting the Findings

Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell along with others will present the findings at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. He recently shared with the BBC:

“These were throat swab tests that were positive each time. The patient never had a negative test. And we can tell it was one continuous infection because the genetic signature of it - the information we got from sequencing the viral genome - was unique and constant in that patient.”

Does such a rare, yet prolonged SARS-CoV-2 infection give rise to new mutations? Snell reports that of the nine patients this group of medics checked no new dangerous variants emerged.

What about vaccine-resistant variants?

According to University of Exeter Medical School’s Dr. David Strain, Although Omicron did not arise in these individuals, this demonstrates a very clear pathway by which vaccine-resistant variants may arise. Whereas with BA.2 we have got lucky that the mutation is associated with a less severe illness, there is no guarantee that the next iteration will be the same.”