While I’m sure there are still plenty of people out there who believe COVID-19 wasn’t real to begin with, there’s one guy out there who is proving its existence for a world record 750+ days.
By now, most people fall somewhere in between. They’ve either somehow managed to dodge it with a ton of help from vaccines our government is now trying to take away from us, or you caught it so many times you’re starting to believe your body is just a regular stop along COVID’s seasonal migratory patterns.
The unnamed man in his 40s, whose case was published in The Lancet, had advanced HIV and wasn’t receiving antiretroviral treatment at the time. He had a dangerously low helper T-cell count, at just 35 per microliter of blood.
For perspective, a healthy amount is anywhere between 500 and 1,500. His weakened immune system provided the virus with the exact environment it needed to establish a permanent foothold and even mutate within his body.
Man Breaks COVID Record With 2-Year Infection
And mutate it did. A Boston University team sequenced samples taken over the course of the infection. What they found was fascinating, if a little scary.
The virus evolved inside this one guy at a pace similar to its community-level spread. Some mutations even mirrored ones found in the omicron variant, suggesting that variants like omicron might’ve originally evolved in people with long-term infections. All told, the patient was hospitalized five times and suffered non-stop symptoms from 2020 to 2022.
It sounds like a horror story, but there is a sliver of good news: this particular strain wasn’t very infectious, probably because it was adapting too well to one host. Viruses thrive in the jumping from one person to another.
Just as we adapt to every virus that enters our body, those viruses adapt, too, as they jump around, constantly shifting and changing, and mutating to keep themselves alive. It’s evolution at work, and sometimes its work is ugly and kills us.
Researchers say that this man’s case of long-term COVID is a lesson that we need to learn from. We need to treat and clear long-term infections, not just for those suffering from them, but for the rest of us who’d prefer not to catch a version of a viral disease that’s been incubating and mutating for literal years.
That means improving access to healthcare, making sure everyone is up to date on their vaccinations, and breaking out those KN95 masks when necessary.
The post This Man Had COVID for Over 2 Years—a World Record appeared first on VICE.
