A 72-year-old man who had been sick with COVID-19 for 613 days, the longest known infection with the virus to date, has died in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The patient, diagnosed with the Omicron variant in February 2022, died of a relapse of a disorder in the body.
As Science Alert reports, the virus had been in his body for so long that it evolved into a variant that damages the immune system.
The man had been vaccinated against the coronavirus several times, but his immune system had failed to protect against the virus, which often happens in elderly and immunocompromised people.
People with weakened immune systems are at much greater risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 and up to 13 times more likely to be hospitalized, even when triple vaccinated.
With 22 mutations
The 72-year-old had previously undergone a stem cell transplant and later developed lymphoma, requiring treatment that destroyed the white cells responsible for producing antibodies against the virus.
The elderly man’s case will be presented at the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases World Congress 2024 in April.
Genomic sequencing of 27 nasal and throat swabs, collected between February 2022 and September 2023, showed the man had acquired more than 50 mutations compared to the Omicron BA.1 variants circulating at the time.
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