Long COVID and SARS-CoV-2 persistence: new answers, more questions
In their study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Wenting Zuo and colleagues collected tissue samples from 225 patients who had recovered from mild COVID-19 and found that SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA was distributed across ten distinct solid tissues, plasma, and blood cells up to 4 months after infection. Importantly, detection of viral RNA, and higher virus copy numbers, were significantly associated with post-COVID-19 condition (also known as long COVID; odds ratio for association of persistent viral RNA with long COVID symptoms=5·17, 95% CI 2·64–10·13, p<0·0001).