After ‘world-record’ 305 days of testing positive, OAP recovers

A RETIRED driving instructor is thought to have become the longest-suffering coronavirus patient after testing positive for 305 consecutive days.

Dave Smith, 72, from Bristol, said he had prepared for death and his wife had organised his funeral five times. He was infected for more than ten months, often coughing for ‘ five hours straight’.

He told the BBC: ‘I was ready to give up, I said to Lyn, my wife: “Let me go, I’ve been hanging on, it’s so bad.”’ Mr Smith, pictured, whose weight dropped from 1 .5 stone (117kg) to 10 stone (64kg), was successfully treated with laboratory engineered antibodies from pharmaceutical firm Regeneron – the same procedure given to then US president Donald Trump. Mr Smith celebrated being free of Covid with a bottle of champagne. His case is to be presented to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases. The previous longest case was 5 days. Others have spent longer in hospital, without testing positive for the whole time.