A BRITISH patient continued to test positive for Covid for 505 days, the longest on record.
The unnamed person spent nearly two years continually testing positive before sadly passing away.
Medics have also found one of the first “occult” infections. The term means the patient was thought to have cleared the virus — with negative testing showing — yet the infection was actually ongoing but undetected.
Boffins studied nine individuals in London who had weakened immune systems due to organ transplantation, HIV, cancer or other illnesses.
They all tested positive for the virus for at least eight weeks, but two patients had persistent infections for more than a year.
Five of the nine have survived and one of those has had an ongoing infection for 412 days.
Dr Luke Snell, of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, said: “New variants of the virus have emerged throughout the pandemic.
“Some of these variants transmit more easily between people, cause more severe disease, or make the vaccines less effective.
“One theory is these viral variants evolve in individuals whose immune systems are weakened.
“This study provides evidence that mutations found in variants of concern do arise in immunocompromised patients.”
Dr Gaia Nebbia said of the occult infection: “The patient was symptomatic and tested positive, before recovering.
“They then tested negative several times before developing Covid symptoms again several months later.”
