UK doctors who treated the patient at a London hospital say persistent infections are still rare.
UK doctors believe they have documented the longest Covid infection on record - a patient they treated who had detectable levels of the virus for more than 16 months, or 505 days, in total.Persistent infections such as this are still rare, say the London medics.
Chronic infections like these need studying to improve our understanding of Covid and the risks it can pose, say experts. They were in and out of hospital many times over the next 72 weeks, for both routine checks and care.The doctors, from King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, say detailed lab analysis revealed it was the same, persistent infection, rather than repeated bouts.This is different to "long Covid", where the virus is cleared from the body but symptoms persist.
He told 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."Prolonged infections are rare but important, say the researchers, because they might give rise to new variants of Covid - although that did not happen in this case.
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