Jon CohenScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.People who recover from COVID-19 sometimes later test positive for SARS-CoV-2, suggesting their immune systems could not ward off a second attack by the coronavirus or that they have a lingering infection.
A study now hints at a different explanation in which the virus hides in an unexpected place. The work, only reported in a preprint, suggests the pandemic pathogen takes a page from HIV and other retroviruses and integrates its genetic code—but, importantly, just parts of it—into people’s chromosomes.
The phenomenon, if true and frequent, could have profound implications that range from false signals of active infection to.