Grigory Efimov, head of the transplant immunology laboratory at the National Medical Research Center of Hematology of the Russian Ministry of Health, commented on the message that doctors had detected cases of prolonged infection with coronavirus - in the body of carriers of leukemia, traces of the virus were recorded for more than six months.
"In patients with leukemia for a very long time, months can last for a new coronavirus infection, but one must understand that patients with leukemia are in severe immunosuppression, that is, their immune system does not function like the immune system of a normal person," he said in an interview with the Zvezda TV channel.
According to him, such a long presence of the virus in the body does not spread to healthy people, and the immune system of a healthy person has the resources to cope with this infection.
In turn, the head of the Department of Microbiology, Virology and Immunology of Sechenov University, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vitaly Zverev, in an interview with Vzglyad, noted that such cases are still rare.
“Firstly, they need to be carefully studied, and, secondly, to see if there really is a difference in the long stay of the virus. That is, so the virus mutates with such a chronic infection. Most likely not so much that it will be something new, and antibodies will not work against,”he said.
As researchers from the University of Southern California found out, traces of the virus remained in the bodies of three patients for more than six months. We are talking about a young man, as well as a boy and a girl of preschool age.
