A Turkish man has tested positive for Covid for 14 months in a row.
Muzaffer Kayasan, 56, continues to battle the virus after 78 straight positive tests as he set a record for the Turkey’s longest continuous infection.
Doctors said Mr Kayasan’s infectiousness may stem from a weakened immune system caused by leukaemia.
Though he has been in and out of hospital since November 2020, he said his spirits remain high.
His son Gokhan joked: “We kept saying how positive he is and now the guy turned positive [for Covid] and can’t go back to negative.”
Under Turkey’s Covid laws, anyone who tests positive for the virus must self-isolate for seven days – meaning Mr Kayasan has not been able to meet his family or go outside for well over a year.
However, he receives regular visits from his young granddaughter Azra who talks to him through the back door of his house.
"I will play with you when I get well,” the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying after he gave her a plastic toy telephone.
Covid patients with immunosuppression are at risk of prolonged infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome, according to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Mr Kayasan’s doctor Serap Simsek Yavuz, an infectious diseases at Istanbul University, said it was the longest case he had tracked.
Doctors are closely monitoring Mr Kayasan for any risk that he could be harbouring a mutated variant.
“The case of a patient testing positive for 441 days is not something that has been reported until today,” said Cagri Buke, doctor of infectious diseases and clinical microbiology at Acibadem Hospital.
The positive tests also make Mr Kayasan ineligible for a vaccine, according to Turkish guidelines that state positive patients must wait for a full recovery to get their jab.
Mr Kayasan has appealed to authorities to ease his confinement.
Dave Smith, from Bristol, tested positive for the virus for 305 days - a record in the UK.
He told the BBC how he celebrated the news of his negative test with a bottle of champagne.
