Persistence of infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles for up to 37 days in patients with mild COVID-19.

ABSTRACT:

Background

People suffering from COVID-19 are typically considered non-infectious 14 days after diagnosis if symptoms have disappeared for at least 48 h. We describe three patients who independently acquired their infection. These three patients experienced mild COVID-19 and completely recovered symptomatically within 10 days, but remained PCR-positive in deep pharyngeal samples for at least 38 days. We attempted to isolate virus from pharyngeal swabs to investigate whether these patients still carried infectious virus.

Methods

Infectious virus was amplified in Vero E6 cells and characterized by electron microscopy and WGS. The immune response was investigated by ELISA and peptide arrays.

Results

In all three cases, infectious and replication-competent virus was isola

SUBMITTER: Zahn T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8652783 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature