Persistence and viability of SARS-CoV-2 in primary infection and reinfections

Abstract

Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, virus isolation in the infected patient was only possible for a short period of time and it was striking that this occurred constantly and did not provide guidance on the clinical course. This fact led to confusion about the efficacy of some of the drugs initially used, which seemed to have a high efficiency in viral clearance and proved ineffective in modifying the course of the disease. The immune response also did not prove to be definitive in terms of evolution, although most of the patients with very mild disease had a weak or no antibody response, and the opposite was true for the most severe patients. With whatever the antibody response, few cases have been re-infected after a first infection and generally, those that have, have not reproduced a spectrum of disease similar to the first infection. Among those re-infected, a large number have been asymptomatic or with very few symptoms, others have had a moderate picture and very few have had a poor evolution. Despite this dynamic of rapid viral clearance, laboratory tests were still able to generate positive results in the recovery of genomic sequences and this occurred in patients who were already symptom-free, in others who were still ill and in those who were very seriously ill. There was also no good correlate. For this reason and with the perspective of this year and the half of pandemic, we compiled what the literature leaves us in these aspects and anticipating that, as always in biology, there are cases that jump the limits of the general behavior of the dynamics of infection in general.