The study suggests that when the genetic material of the virus, called RNA, lingers in the body longer than 14 days, patients may face worse disease outcomes, experience delirium, stay longer in the hospital, and have a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with those who cleared the virus rapidly. The persistence of the virus may also play a role in long COVID, the debilitating suite of symptoms that can last for months. Estimates suggest between 7.7 and 23 million people in the United States alone are now affected by long COVID.
Even after accounting for disease severity, whether the patients were intubated, or had underlying medical comorbidities, “there is something here that signals that patients who are persistently PCR positive have worse outcomes,” says Ayush Batra, a neurologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the new study.
Batra’s study shows that patients who had prolonged shedding during an acute infection risk more severe outcomes from COVID-19, says Timothy Henrich, a virologist and immunologist at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the new research. But the study doesn’t investigate whether this persistent virus is directly responsible for long COVID.
“There are multiple leading hypotheses out there about the cause of long COVID, including viral persistence, and it may be that there are multiple pathways at play, perhaps to some varying degree in any one person,” says Linda Geng, a doctor at Stanford Health Care who co-directs a newly opened Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic for treating long COVID sufferers.
Persisting virus causes worse COVID-19 outcomes
Batra and his team began studying persistent coronavirus infections after observing that some patients who were returning to the hospital were still testing positive for the virus four or five weeks after they were diagnosed with the initial infection.
For their new study, the team analyzed 2,518 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare system between March and August 2020. They focused on PCR tests, which are considered the gold standard, because such tests detect genetic material from the virus and so are highly sensitive and less likely to return false negatives.
The team found that 42 percent of patients continued to test PCR positive two weeks or longer after their initial diagnosis. After more than 90 days, 12 percent of the persistent shedders were still testing positive; one person tested positive 269 days after the original infection.
“Persistent RNA shedding would mean that there still is a reservoir of virus somewhere in the body,” says Michael VanElzakker, a neuroscientist affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Tufts University. Such reservoirs are thought to allow the virus to persist over a long period of time and could trigger the immune system to act aberrantly, perhaps causing long COVID.
“Some patients, for variety of reasons, are not able to clear this reservoir, or their immune system reacts in some abnormal way that results in these persistent symptoms that have come to be termed as long COVID,” says Batra.
Still, many scientists don’t think there is sufficient evidence yet to link the persistence of viral RNA to long COVID.
Sleeping viruses
The list of human tissues where SARS-CoV-2 hides long after the initial infection is growing. Studies have identified the virus, or genetic material from it, in the intestines of patients four months after initial infection, and inside the lung of a deceased donor more than a hundred days after recovery from COVID-19. One study that’s not yet peer reviewed also detected the virus in the appendix and breast tissues 175 and 462 days, respectively, after coronavirus infections. And research from the U.S. National Institutes of Health that’s also not yet peer reviewed detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA persisting at low levels across multiple tissues for more than seven months, even when it was undetectable in blood.
“It is not surprising to find viruses encountered during the lifetime” surviving in human tissues, says Kei Sato, a virologist at the University of Tokyo. Indeed, Sato’s work has shown that humans frequently accumulate viruses such as Epstein-Barr virus, varicella zoster virus (which causes chicken pox), and many herpes viruses in dormant forms. These persisting viruses are typically present at low levels, so only extensive genetic sequencing can identify them.
This highlights how complicated it is to prove or disprove the association between persisting SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID. Shingles, for example, occurs decades after a chickenpox infection, when the latent virus gets reactivated during immune stress.
Likewise, lingering SARS-CoV-2 could cause long-term health problems. Henrich thinks when the virus is seeded in deep tissues, it potentially causes the immune system to shift into a dysregulated inflammatory state. Such a state is “probably evidence that the virus is capable of persisting, and maybe getting down into sort of an uneasy truce with the body,” says VanElzakker.
Still, associating any lingering virus with long COVID will require extensive studies. “We still don’t know enough to make strong conclusions about any of the current proposed mechanisms, but research is actively underway to answer those questions,” says Geng.
Clearing up persistent virus might cure long COVID
“There are some interesting hypotheses about how Paxlovid may be useful in the treatment of long COVID, but we’d need further investigation and clinical trials before coming to any conclusions,” says Geng.
“It would be important to consider the optimal duration of treatment [of Paxlovid] to ensure long-term and sustained results,” says Geng.
President Joe Biden has directed the secretary of Health and Human Services to create a national action plan on long COVID, and the NIH has launched a multi-year study called RECOVER to understand, prevent, and treat long-term health effects related to COVID-19.
In the meantime, vaccines not only continue to protect against severe disease, but evidence is also emerging that they can prevent many long COVID symptoms. One new study compared 1.5 million unvaccinated COVID-19 patients to 25,225 vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections, and it found that vaccines significantly reduced the risk of developing long COVID symptoms 28 days after an infection. The protective effect of vaccination got even larger at 90 days post-infection.
“Although a majority of people do not develop long COVID, it’s certainly a risk, and COVID doesn’t stop after the first 10 days of becoming infected,” says Henrich. “For those who don’t take COVID seriously, it can be life changing.”
The Canadian government says it will donate up to 200,000 vaccine doses to fight the mpox outbreak in Congo and other African countries.
It says the donated doses of Imvamune will come from Canada’s existing supply and will not affect the country’s preparedness for mpox cases in this country.
Minister of Health Mark Holland says the donation “will help to protect those in the most affected regions of Africa and will help prevent further spread of the virus.”
Dr. Madhukar Pai, Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health, says although the donation is welcome, it is a very small portion of the estimated 10 million vaccine doses needed to control the outbreak.
Vaccine donations from wealthier countries have only recently started arriving in Africa, almost a month after the World Health Organization declared the mpox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
A few days after the declaration in August, Global Affairs Canada announced a contribution of $1 million for mpox surveillance, diagnostic tools, research and community awareness in Africa.
On Thursday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said mpox is still on the rise and that testing rates are “insufficient” across the continent.
Jason Kindrachuk, Canada research chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba, said donating vaccines, in addition to supporting surveillance and diagnostic tests, is “massively important.”
But Kindrachuk, who has worked on the ground in Congo during the epidemic, also said that the international response to the mpox outbreak is “better late than never (but) better never late.”
“It would have been fantastic for us globally to not be in this position by having provided doses a much, much longer time prior than when we are,” he said, noting that the outbreak of clade I mpox in Congo started in early 2023.
Clade II mpox, endemic in regions of West Africa, came to the world’s attention even earlier — in 2022 — as that strain of virus spread to other countries, including Canada.
Two doses are recommended for mpox vaccination, so the donation may only benefit 100,000 people, Pai said.
Pai questioned whether Canada is contributing enough, as the federal government hasn’t said what percentage of its mpox vaccine stockpile it is donating.
“Small donations are simply not going to help end this crisis. We need to show greater solidarity and support,” he said in an email.
“That is the biggest lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic — our collective safety is tied with that of other nations.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
