A Covid-19 patient with a weakened immune system incubated a new, highly mutated strain for 613 days before succumbing to an underlying illness, researchers in the Netherlands have discovered.
The patient, a 72-year-old man with Blood disorderfailed to mount a strong immune response to multiple Covid injections before catching the omicron variant in February 2022. Detailed analysis of samples collected from more than two dozen nose and throat swabs found that the coronavirus had developed resistance to sotrovimab, a Covid antibody treatment, within a few weeks, scientists at the Center for Experimental and Molecular Medicine at the University of Amsterdam said. It later acquired more than 50 mutations, including some that suggested a greater ability to evade immune defenses, they said.
The SARS-CoV-2 infection, which lasts 20 months, is the oldest known, according to the researchers, who present the case at a medical center. meeting in Barcelona next week. While his mutant virus is not known to have infected others, it highlights how prolonged infections allow the pandemic virus to accumulate genetic changes, potentially generating new variants of concern.
“This case highlights the risk of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individuals,” the authors said. “We emphasize the importance of continued genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution in immunocompromised individuals with persistent infections.”
Scientists study genomic data collected from residual waters samples reported evidence of individuals in the community shedding heavily mutated coronaviruses for more than four years. These persistent infections can also cause patients to experience long Covid symptoms, research suggests.
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