335 days… that’s almost a year!
A 47-year-old woman from Bethesda, Maryland in the United States was diagnosed with COVID-19 for 335 days, now dubbed the world’s longest infection.
Photo via The Sacramento Bee
She is also a cancer survivor!
According to Mashable SEA, the woman was hospitalized with COVID-19 at the National Institutes of Health campus for testing positive despite showing mild or no symptoms.
A study revealed that she had undergone a successful blood cancer treatment in 2018 which left her with low levels of B cells, leading her to be immunocompromised, which means she began consistently testing positive for COVID-19.
Doctors initially believed that these were false positives due to the residual virus left in the system after the infection cleared, but when she began testing positive again in March, 2021, doctors began investigating by sequencing its genome.
The doctors also discovered that the virus was similar to the ones she carried 10 months before, however, the strain was different from the one that was circulating around at that time.
The woman finally recovered in April, 335 days later.
Photo via Financial Times
Amazing!
By: Aishah Akashah Ahadiat
