COVID-19 patient infected for nearly 14 months finally cured after being given this

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

A COVID-19 patient infected for nearly 14 months has finally been cured with the experimental drugs cocktail given to former president Donald Trump.

He was struck down by an early variant of the coronavirus - and had a weakened immune system following a kidney transplant.

Now the 59-year-old Londoner has been declared free of the disease - 411 days after first being diagnosed.

The case is one of the longest on record. It is different to "long COVID", where symptoms last after the infection has gone.

Persistent infections are rare, say the London team. Most people naturally clear the virus.

The individual originally tested positive in December 2020 - and continued to do so intermittently during routine hospital appointments until January 2022.

By then he had received three doses of the vaccine. Genetic analysis revealed he had a mutated version of the original Wuhan variant - which was dominant in the UK.

He was eventually given a monoclonal antibody treatment, made by biotech company Regeneron, which binds to the virus to stop it from infecting cells and replicating.

It was given to the former US president after he contracted Covid in October 2020. The team at Guy's & St. Thomas' Hospital are confident the unnamed patient is cured.

Chronic infections like these need studying to improve our understanding of Covid and the risks it can pose.

Lead author Dr. Luke Blagdon Snell said: "Some new variants of the virus are resistant to all the antibody treatments available in the UK and Europe.

"Some people with weakened immune systems are still at risk of severe illness and becoming persistently infected. We are still working to understand the best way to protect and treat them."

The variant has long since been replaced by alpha, delta and finally omicron. A DNA sequence technique can rapidly identify them - enabling improved personalized therapies.

Dr. Snell said: "Since the pandemic began, neutralizing antibodies have been regularly used as treatments.

"Famous examples include former US President Donald Trump, who received the same Regeneron cocktail as this 411-day infected patient."

But the continual emergence of new variants eventually renders them ineffective. For omicron, no treatments are currently available.

Recently, advocacy groups have campaigned for another monoclonal antibody cocktail, named Evusheld, to be made available as protection against infection.

Writing in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Dr. Snell said: "The 411-day patient remains stable and well, and is one of the longest known cases of Covid infection."

A 505-day infected patient previously treated by the same team at Guy's & St. Thomas'
is believed to be the longest on record.

The unnamed individual had had other underlying medical conditions and died in the hospital in 2021.