Viral researchers believe someone in central Ohio has been infected with COVID-19 for at least two years, and they want to find that person.
While the researchers believe there is no threat to public health, they hope this case holds much-needed answers to treating long COVID.
Molecular virologist Dr. Marc Johnson, a microbiology professor at the University of Missouri’s medical school, spent much of his career studying HIV.
That changed in early 2020 when Missouri health officials asked him to lead the state’s wastewater sampling program to help track COVID outbreaks. At the time, Johnson said there was not much data available on the genetic material of the virus.
“There was no protocol established at that point for sequencing SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater, so I developed my own,” Johnson said.
As the virus evolved into different variants, like Delta and Omicron, sequencing its genetic material helped identity which strains were more prevalent in different areas. That’s when Johnson discovered what he calls “cryptic” strains, or “cryptics.” “(Cryptics) have certain patterns; there are certain mutations that they regularly accumulate that are not in a circulating lineages,” Johnson said.
Johnson found that these unique versions of the virus would linger in one wastewater system for a period of time and suddenly disappear. At first, he could not understand why these mutated sequences weren’t spreading, even in densely populated areas like New York City.
“I thought it was coming from the rats, simply because I couldn’t think of anything else that was– had enough mass in the sewer shed that wouldn’t move around,” Johnson said. “We’ve tested more rat feces than I care to remember.”
If we have been tracking this individual for 2 years and still picking up active covid virus from him – then clearly the concept that Long Covid patients are not spreading the virus is not correct. Maybe we should start retesting long covid patients with accurate testing devices rather than the old home test strips that were so inaccurate they had more false negatives than positive results.