A British affected person has died after the longest COVID an infection on document — frequently testing optimistic for a staggering 505 days.
The unidentified affected person, who had a weakened immune system, succumbed after struggling “one steady an infection” that lasted almost 17 months, in keeping with Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell, of Man’s and St Thomas’ NHS Basis Belief.
COVID throat-swab assessments “have been optimistic every time — the affected person by no means had a unfavourable take a look at,” Snell advised the BBC, as per The Instances of London.
“And we are able to inform it was one steady an infection as a result of the genetic signature of it, the data we obtained from sequencing the viral genome, was distinctive and fixed in that affected person,” the physician mentioned.
Snell advised the BBC that “at 505 days, it definitely appears to be the longest reported an infection.”
Nevertheless, he conceded that “there’s no technique to know for positive” as a result of
“not everybody will get examined, particularly regularly like this case.”


The now-deceased affected person was one among two folks in a London examine that had infections lasting greater than a yr, the UK Instances mentioned.
One other has examined optimistic for 412 days — with the researchers saying it’s probably they are going to break the 505-day document in the event that they survive, the report mentioned.
The 9 within the examine all had weakened immune programs from organ transplantation, HIV, most cancers or medical therapies. Their infections averaged 72 days, the report mentioned, with 4 not surviving.