Rare coronavirus patient’s mild symptoms but long illness may point to ‘chronic’ mutation: researchers
- Potential ‘chronic patients’ may have prolonged ability to infect their surroundings, Chinese researchers warn
- ‘The virus and the host may even form a symbiotic relationship,’ they say
The researchers warn there may be more “chronic infected patients” who carry the infection into their surroundings and trigger an outbreak.
A middle-aged man whose symptoms were not severe appears to have formed a “dynamic balance” with the coronavirus after an extremely prolonged illness lasting 49 days, Chinese military researchers reported in a preprint article on Medrxiv.org last week.
The patient had been observed to have both a high Covid-19 viral load and, at the same time, his immune cell indicators had remained stable.
“The virus and the host may even form a symbiotic relationship,” said the researchers from the Army Medical University in Chongqing, No 967 Hospital of PLA, Dalian, and General Hospital of the PLA Central Theatre Command in Wuhan.
As the signs showed that his body could not eliminate the coronavirus with regular therapy and that he might still have been infectious, the patient was treated with a plasma transfusion from recovered Covid-19 patients.