A Covid-19 patient who had the virus for more than 13 months has finally been cured. Doctors treated the long-suffering patient with a cocktail of drugs and he finally recovered after 411 days of infection.
The 59-year-old man, who has a weakened immune system following a kidney transplant, was unable to get rid of an early variant of the virus, according to experts from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, and King’s College London.
He is believed to be one of the longest living patients with a persistent Covid infection. A previous patient treated by the same team tested positive for Covid for 505 days but subsequently died.
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In this latest case, medics detected the man’s ongoing infection by analysing the genetics of the strain of the virus he was carrying. He was then given a cocktail of neutralising antibodies (Regeneron) known to be effective against early variants, which finally allowed his body to get rid of Covid.
The research, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, said the man originally tested positive in December 2020 and, although his symptoms went away, he continued to test positive intermittently until January 2022.
The medics warn, however, that the emergence of new variants of Covid has meant neutralising antibody treatments are now largely ineffective.
Dr Luke Snell, from Guy’s & St Thomas’, said: “Some new variants of the virus are resistant to all the antibody treatments available in the UK and Europe. Some people with weakened immune systems are still at risk of severe illness and becoming persistently infected. We are still working to understand the best way to protect and treat them.”
It comes after the number of Covid-19 deaths registered in England and Wales rose for the fourth week in a row – although numbers remain well below those seen early on in the pandemic, figures show. Some 687 deaths registered in the week ending October 21 mentioned coronavirus on the death certificate, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
The rise is being driven by the latest wave of Covid-19 infections, which has been underway since the start of September. Data released by the ONS last week suggests the rise in infections in England appears to be levelling off, but virus numbers are continuing to increase in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The ONS said it remains too early to say if the UK is seeing a turning point in the level of infections. It will be a while before any change has an impact on death registrations.
During the previous wave of infections in the summer, deaths peaked at 810 in the week ending July 29. This was well below the numbers seen during the early waves of the pandemic, when weekly deaths peaked around 10 times this level.
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