I want to tell you about a paper we published this month which is our most in-depth work on persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunosuppressed people with advanced HIV disease. We focused on how it is eventually cleared. nature.com/articles/s4146…
In our cohort we followed people after SARS-CoV-2 infection in Durban, South Africa, including people immunosuppressed because of advanced HIV disease who had delayed adherence to antiretroviral therapy to suppress HIV. We found this group had much longer SARS-CoV-2 infections:
I want to thank the lead author @farinakarim, @KhadijaKhan24, @LustigGil, @Zesuliwe_Jule and all the laboratory and clinical team, T cell collaborators Catherine Riou and Wendy Burgers, and @PennyMo70026063, @rjlessells, @Tuliodna, and especially our partner Yunus Moosa
@sigallab It was likely not cleared if you were only checking in the nose. For God's sake. Did you look anywhere else in the body? Look at all the studies with viral reservoirs all over the body, but you conclude the virus was cleared by testing the first place & easiest place to clear?
@sigallab If I read it right, viral clearance here was always from the nose—there was no testing for SARS2 in other tissue compartments. Is there any way you could expand your assays to examine clearance from other tissue compartments?