When Muzaffer Kayasan first caught COVID-19, he thought he was destined to die as he already had leukaemia. Fourteen months and 78 straight positive tests later, he is still alive – and still battling to shake off the infection.
Kayasan, 56, has Turkey’s longest recorded continuous COVID-19 infection, doctors say, possibly due to a weakened immune system from the cancer. Nine months in hospital and five months mostly alone in his flat have separated him from much of the outside world, reports Reuters.
Coronavirus patients with immunosuppression are at risk of prolonged infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome, according to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Another, by the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Society, shows one in four blood cancer patients do not produce detectable antibodies even after receiving two vaccine shots.
Kayasan’s doctor, Serap Simsek Yavuz, infectious diseases and clinical microbiology professor at Istanbul University, said this was the longest case they have tracked and it was being closely monitored for any risk of a mutated variant.
The positive tests make Kayasan ineligible for a vaccine, according to Turkish guidelines that say positive patients must wait for a full recovery to receive a shot. Kayasan, who lost his sense of taste and smell through the ordeal, has appealed to authorities to at least ease his confinement.
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