According to the study published in MedRxiv, which includes research from the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) that has not yet received official approval in the field of medicine, scientists at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, who caught COVID-19 and could not recover for 218 days. met the patient.
It was reported that the male patient, in his 40s, who received an aggressive cancer treatment that weakened his immune system before contracting COVID-19, contracted COVID-19 in early September 2020, and the tests performed on him only gave a negative result in April 2021.
Maria Cassia Mendes-Correa, from the Sao Paulo University School of Medicine, who conducted the research, said, “All PCR tests performed on the patient between the 6th and 218th days after the onset of symptoms gave positive results. The virus was not only present in the body, but was also replicating. “There was a risk of infecting others,” he said.
It was determined that he did not develop any antibodies against COVID-19
Tests showing that the virus is contagious in the patient’s body were demonstrated in studies conducted in a laboratory environment with weekly samples.
Mendes-Correa, reminding that the patient subject to the research stays in the hospital most of the time, but is in quarantine at home for a short time, used the expression “The multiplying capacity of the virus was observed continuously and permanently for 196 days in a row.”
It was stated that the persistence of the virus was found for most of the research period in the analyzes made from the blood, urine and anal region samples taken from the patient between January and April 2021.
On the other hand, serological tests performed on the patient showed that the patient did not develop any antibodies against COVID-19.
The virus has mutated in the same body
In the samples taken from the patient, the researchers found that the virus had mutated, some in the “spike” protein that allows COVID-19 to penetrate the human body.
Mendes-Correa said, “These data show that the mutation process normally observed in society occurs within the same body. This is a worrying situation, because it supports the emergence of viral variants that are better adapted to the human organism.”
Brazil, a South American country with a population of more than 210 million, is among the countries most affected by the epidemic in the world, with more than half a million deaths from COVID-19 and more than 18 million cases.