COVID-19 Virus Lingers In The Body More Than A Year After Infection: Studies

The study found that COVID antigens lingered in the blood up to 14 months after infection and more than two years in tissue samples of people who had the infection (Credit: Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik)

The SARS-CoV-2 virus persists inside the human body long after the acute phase of the infection, two new studies have found.

The studies, conducted by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), showed that COVID antigens lingered in the blood up to 14 months after infection and more than two years in tissue samples of people who had the infection. The results were presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) conducted in Denver, Colorado.