(London) Contaminated with coronavirus for ten months: Forty positive tests and seven subsequent hospitalizations, told Dave Smith, the 72-year-old Briton, of the ordeal he lived, which is the world’s longest-running COVID-19 infection.
“I pray (ais) all the time: ‘The next will be negative, the next will be negative, but it wasn’t,'” the driving instructor told the BBC of his PCR tests in Bristol (southwest of England).
Dave Smith was infected in March 2020, at the start of the first wave of the pandemic in the UK, and remained a carrier of the active virus for about 300 days. Her immune system was weakened by leukemia, which was treated with chemotherapy in 2019.
“My energy levels quickly waned, and I could no longer lift anything,” he recalls. “I coughed once for five hours without stopping […]5 a.m. to 10 a.m., non-stop. If you can imagine the stress it puts on your body.”
His weight is about 117 kilograms, and he has melted more than 60 kilograms during the illness. “I was ready to give up” and ready to die, he says. “My wife started organizing funerals five times,” he explains daily Watchman.
“One time, I was bedridden for two or three months. My wife had to wash me and shave me in bed because I couldn’t get up.”
Dave Smith finally received a negative test after 45 days of treatment, based on empathy, with an experimental combination of treatments for the US group Regeneron, not authorized in the UK. This is the same treatment that former US President Donald Trump received.
Good news that he and his wife celebrated with champagne. “We don’t normally drink,” he said, “but we emptied the bottle that night.”
“It feels like I’ve been given a new life,” though, “I’m not 100% (of my form) because COVID-19 has destroyed my lungs, and it quickly takes hold of my breath.”
The University of Bristol is studying his case.