COVID can quietly linger in your body long after getting sick. What does that mean?

We’ve heard the stories. Some of us are the stories. Exhaustion, brain fog, physical deterioration – long COVID plagues a substantial subset of people who contract the virus.

However, what has remained unclear is why this happens. While research has been approaching the conclusion that the coronavirus lingers in the body, a new study may have just solidified it.

A paper published on April 8 in The Lancet presents strong evidence that the COVID-19 virus can persist for months, or even years, after infection.

“These findings greatly bolster evidence that the coronavirus can linger in tissue and organs, even after recovery from acute infection,” PolyBio said in an April 8 news release.

In the study, researchers analyzed blood samples from 171 adults who had been infected by the virus. They found that one-quarter of these people had COVID proteins in their blood up to one year after their initial infection.

With long COVID affecting so many people, data like this allows scientists to be more confident about the theory of viral persistence, the idea that COVID-19 can just stick around in some people.

Long COVID is a range of recurring or new health issues that continue for weeks, months or years after getting COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People with long COVID experience fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath, as well as varying degrees of disability, immune dysregulation, and organ and tissue damage.

A study like this can also help researchers to know what to focus on next.

“This finding now firmly informs the next step in our research agenda — is persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for causing people’s current symptoms in long COVID or medical events they may have in the future?” Jeffrey N. Martin, a researcher in the study, told PolyBio.

Many people with long COVID are confident the answer is yes. They believe these findings confirm something they’ve been saying for a while now.

Joshua Pribanic, founder of the Long COVID Action Project, is one of these people. He is hopeful that this study will lead to legislation and funding toward more long COVID research. He and other COVID longhaulers point to one particular historical triumph against a persistent virus.

“The most successful treatment and the most successful legislation for something like this is the HIV/AIDS legislation,” he said in a phone interview with McClatchy News.

In the 1990s, after the AIDS virus was named a leading cause of death for people ages 18-44, Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) came out, leading to a 47 percent decline in AIDS-related deaths from 1996 to 1997.

Numerous pieces of government legislation, such as the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990, paved the way for funding and groundbreaking research that both extended and saved countless lives.

COVID-19 longhaulers like Pribanic are now asking, if the government did such a successful push then, why not now too? The April 8 paper only amplifies their drive.

The Long COVID Action Project is asking the government for $28 billion annually to fund long COVID research.

“Research should be redirected to SARS-CoV-2 persistence,” Pribanic said in an April 8 post on X.

With COVID-19 still rampant, moving research in the right direction is more essential than ever.

“The fact that every new SARS-CoV-2 infection has the potential to become chronic is perhaps the single most concerning aspect of this virus,” Amy Proal, President of PolyBio, said. “We have compelling data that viral persistence is much more common than recognized which could have major health implications.”

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