How The Covid-19 Virus Persists in the Body for Months
Reason 3: Hiding in the saliva to evade the immune system. And what it means for immunity.
Virus clearance differs between individuals. It is also one reason why some recover from infections more quickly than others. And the word recovery can be tricky, referring to either disappearance of clinical symptoms or virus elements, or both. So, this article will focus on virus clearance (i.e., being tested negative) rather than recovery.
Persistent Infection
Published studies report that positive diagnosis status for SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of Covid-19, can last for months, despite being symptomless. This is a persistent infection, which is by no means novel.
“Persistent infections are characterized as those in which the virus is not cleared but remains in specific cells of infected individuals,” the Medical Microbiology textbook defined. “Persistent infections may involve stages of both silent and productive infection without rapidly killing or even producing excessive damage to host cells.
Viruses cause most cases of persistent infections. Examples include herpes simplex virus, HIV, measles virus, Epstein-bar virus, hepatitis B virus, etc. Inferring from them, scientists…
