Leukemia patient with asymptomatic COVID-19 shed coronavirus for 70 days: study
A person with leukemia who tested positive for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms was infectious for 70 days, new research has found.
Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were shocked to find an admittedly unusual case of a woman with leukemia and a low antibody count who was infected with the coronavirus for 105 days and infectious for at least 70 of them – while never showing symptoms.
Most people are infectious for eight days or so, though some studies have pointed to a few of them lasting as many as 20 or even 37 days. But the 70-day case eclipses all of that, according to the study, published in the journal Cell on Wednesday.
“At the time we started this study, we really didn’t know much about the duration of virus shedding,” said senior author Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a statement. “As this virus continues to spread, more people with a range of immuno-suppressing disorders will become infected, and it’s important to understand how SARS-CoV-2 behaves in these populations.”
As researchers continue in their quest to learn enough to vanquish this disease, understanding how long people can be actively infected is key, the case study authors emphasized.
About 3 million people in the U.S. have compromised immune systems due to medical conditions, including people with cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy, and transplant recipients who take drugs to suppress their immune systems, the website Science Alert noted.
This particular case had a confluence of distinctive characteristics that make the finding rare, the researchers said. The 71-year-old woman’s immune system, compromised by chronic lymphocytic leukemia and associated conditions, was unable to mount a strong response, which meant she never produced enough antibodies to fend it off, they said.
At the same time, she never became sick from the virus herself. It was only detected during screening after she was admitted to the hospital for severe anemia, the research statement said, when doctors realized she lived in a rehab facility that was in the grips of an outbreak, in Kirkland, Washington.
Though the woman’s case had unique characteristics, it also has implications for other effects of SARS-CoV-2 on the general population, as well as immune-compromised patients, researchers said.
“Although it is difficult to extrapolate from a single patient, our data suggest that long-term shedding of infectious virus may be a concern in certain immuno-compromised patients,” the research team wrote.
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