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MONDAY, Nov.9, 2020 (HealthDay News) – Most people with the new coronavirus appear to be actively shedding the infectious virus for about eight days. But a woman in Kirkland, Washington, may have set a record by clearing the virus for at least 70 days.
The 71-year-old man was infected for at least 105 days overall, but had no symptoms, according to a new report.
This unusual case involved a woman with leukemia and a low antibody count who became infected early in the pandemic. The case study was published on November 4 in the journal Cell.
As far as he knows, this is the longest case of a person infected with the new coronavirus and has no symptoms, said lead author Vincent Munster, a virologist at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“At the time we started this study, we really didn’t know much about the duration of the virus shedding,” Munster said in a journal news release.
“As this virus continues to spread, more people with a variety of immunosuppressive disorders will become infected, and it is important to understand how SARS-CoV-2 behaves in these populations,” Munster explained.
Additionally, COVID-19 is new and not well understood, so learning more about how long people can remain actively infected can help guide public health decisions, the study authors said.
“Is [type of case] it was something we expected to happen, “Munster said.
Doctors discovered that the woman carried the virus when she was hospitalized for severe anemia. At the hospital, she was screened for COVID-19 because she had been a resident of a rehab facility experiencing an outbreak. Munster’s laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, then began studying samples that were regularly collected from his upper respiratory tract.
The researchers found that the infectious virus remained present for at least 70 days after the first positive test, and the woman did not completely clear the virus until after day 105.
The study authors believe that she remained infectious for so long because her compromised immune system was unable to fight off the coronavirus. Blood tests showed that his body was never able to produce antibodies against him.
The woman was treated with convalescent plasma, but it had no effect due to her low antibody concentration, according to Munster. Convalescent plasma is antibody-rich serum from the blood of people who have recovered from an infection.
But even though the woman’s immune system was unable to generate an antibody response, she never developed COVID-19 symptoms.
“We have seen similar cases with influenza and with the Middle East respiratory syndrome, which is also caused by a coronavirus,” Munster said. “We hope to see more reports like ours in the future.”
More information
To learn more about COVID-19, visit the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCE: Cell, press release, November 4, 2020
