An immunocompromised man endured ongoing acute COVID-19 for more than 750 days. During this time, he experienced persistent respiratory symptoms and was hospitalized five times.

In spite of its duration, the man's condition differs from long COVID as it wasn't a case of symptoms lingering once the virus had cleared out, but the viral phase of SARS-CoV-2 that continued for over two years.

While this record may be easy to dismiss as something that occurs only to vulnerable people, persistent infections have implications for us all, US researchers warn in their new study.

"Long-term infections allow the virus to explore ways to infect cells more efficiently, and [this study] adds to the evidence that more transmissible variants have emerged from such infections," Harvard University

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