COVID positive for 10 months: 72-year-old Bristol man got 42 tests done

A 72-year-old man in the UK has reportedly been infected with the novel coronavirus for nearly 10 months which is being touted to be the longest recorded active COVID-19 infection to date.

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New Delhi: In a bizarre case, a man in the United Kingdom has reportedly been infected with the novel coronavirus for nearly 10 months now. It is alleged to be the longest recorded active COVID-19 infection to date with the infection lasting more than 290 days, The Guardian reported.

Dave Smith, 72, got infected with the coronavirus at the start of the first wave in the UK in 2020. He has recorded 42 positive PCR tests and was admitted to hospital seven times, the article read.

“Whenever I went bad, I went really bad – down to death’s door. My wife started to arrange a funeral five times,” he was quoted as saying.

Smith, a retired driving instructor from Bristol, eventually got cured with the help of antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron the same one which was used to treat former US President Donald Trump. 

It contains two antibodies, casirivimab, and imdevimab, which bind to different sites on the coronavirus spike protein, blocking it from infecting new cells, The Guardian reported in an article.

Notably, it was allowed on compassionate grounds in his case though the treatment regime is not clinically approved for use in Britain.

Smith has a history of lung disease and had recently recovered from leukaemia when he caught the coronavirus infection.