Longest-Ever COVID Infection Lasted More Than 600 Days
A Dutch man with lymphoma and other blood disorders was infected with the COVID-causing virus for nearly two years, during which time the pathogen evolved numerous mutations
Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images
When the Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, was surging around the world in February 2022, a man infected with the variant was admitted to Amsterdam University Medical Center. He was 72 years old and had myelodysplastic and myeloproliferative overlap syndrome—a combination of disorders that disrupt proper blood cell production—and lymphoma. In the following 612 days, during which time he was in and out of the hospital, the man continued to test positive for COVID. His case is the longest consecutive COVID infection ever documented, according to a recent report by researchers at the University of Amsterdam.
The report details the evolution of the man’s symptoms and his treatment course and how the Omicron variant developed more than 50 new mutations during the more than 20 months that the individual was infected. The report, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, was presented this past weekend at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Global Congress in Barcelona.
“Chronic infections and viral evolution [are] commonly described in [the] literature, and there are other cases of immunocompromised patients who have had [COVID] infections for hundreds of days,” says Magda Vergouwe, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at the university’s Center for Experimental and Molecular Medicine and lead author of the report. “But this is unique due to the extreme length of the infection…, and with the virus staying in his body for so long, it was possible for mutations to just develop and develop and develop.”
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