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Man had rare Covid infection that lasted 613 days, showed extensive mutations
- Cases like this increase the risk of more dangerous coronavirus variants emerging, researchers say
- The patient eventually died from a flare-up of a previous illnesses and is not known to have infected anyone with his mutated Covid-19 strain
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Researchers from the Netherlands have reported an extremely long Covid-19 infection in a man who died last year – and warn of the emergence of more dangerous variants of the coronavirus.
The elderly man, who was immunocompromised due to previous illnesses, was admitted to a hospital in Amsterdam in February 2022 with a Covid-19 infection, according to a statement.
He was continuously positive for the coronavirus until his death in October 2023 for a total of 613 days.
Other cases of very long infections in people whose immune systems were unable to adequately fight the virus have previously been reported.
The researchers led by Magda Vergouwe from the University of Amsterdam plan to present the results at a congress of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona on April 27-30.
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