How this 72-year-old UK man beat COVID-19, 43 times in 10 months

London, June 25: Dave Smith, a 72-year-old British man tested COVID-19 positive 43 times, spanning a duration for 10 months, in what is seen as the longest recorded case of continuous infection.

Smith, a retired driving instructor from Bristol got infected with the virus when the world witnessed the first wave of coronavirus in 2020.

During the span of 10 months, he has been hospitalised seven times. There were times when his wife started to arrange for a funeral five times, due to the severity of the case.

"I'd resigned myself, I'd called the family in, made my peace with everybody, said goodbye," Smith told BBC television.

"At one point I was bedridden for two or three months. My wife had to wash and shave me in bed because I just couldn't stand up. Sometimes I thought, I wish they'd take me in the middle of the night because I just can't go on anymore. You get to the point where you are more afraid of living than you are of dying," he said.

Smith was eventually recovered after treatment with a cocktail of synthetic antibodies developed by the US biotech firm Regeneron.

The cocktail antibody was used during the treatment of former US President Donald Trump, when he was tested positive for Covid-19 last year.