Science magazine published an article about a woman who suffered from covid for 335 days

In the spring of 2020, a 47-year-old woman was hospitalized with COVID-19 at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, Science reported. The illness lasted for 335 days - the infection was evidenced by repeated positive tests and persistent symptoms, due to which the patient required supplemental oxygen.

For several months after the initial infection, the level of the virus in the body was low, and then, in March 2021, it jumped again. The researchers compared the genomes of the samples and found that the virus was the same, that is, the patient was not reinfected, but continued to be infected with the same virus for almost a year. These details are reported by the authors of a study published as a preprint on the medRxiv website.

The new coronavirus was probably able to stay in the body for so long because the patient had a weakened immune system due to the lymphoma treatment she had undergone three years prior to infection. The woman was successfully treated with T-cell therapy, but this weakened her immune system. Most of the B cells that make antibodies were depleted.

Chronic coronavirus infections are rare, but they can lead to new strains as an organism with a weakened immune system gives the virus time and space to develop. The lymphoma patient recovered 335 days after the onset of the disease. Since April of this year, she has given several negative tests for COVID-19.