Progression of COVID-19 in a Patient on Anti-CD20 Antibody Treatment: Case Report and Literature Review.

Accumulating evidence suggests that anti-CD20 treatments are associated with a more severe course of COVID-19. We present the case of a 72-year-old woman treated with the B-cell-depleting anti-CD20 antibody rituximab for seropositive rheumatoid arthritis with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causing a clinical relapse more than 4 weeks after the first manifestation. Persistently positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results along with a drop in cycling threshold (Ct) values, in addition to recovery of identical viral genotype by whole genome sequencing (WGS) during the disease course, argued against reinfection.