A federally funded trial of 959 adults with long COVID found that stretching Paxlovid well past its usual five-day course did not improve symptoms compared with placebo. The published trial results appeared August 31, 2026, in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and come from the National Institutes of Health RECOVER initiative.
The finding closes off one of the more prominent theories about what drives long COVID. The idea, held by many patients and some researchers, was that fragments of the virus persist in the body after the initial infection clears, keeping the immune system activated and symptoms going. If that were the main mechanism, a longer antiviral course should have helped. It did not.
