Prolonged viral shedding and new mutations of COVID-19 could complicate the control of the pandemic

Chieh-Fan Chen; Tung-Yuan Tsai; Chen-Hui Yu; Hsiang-Lan Cheng; Ting-Yu Yeh

doi:10.1099/acmi.0.000133

Prolonged viral shedding and new mutations of COVID-19 could complicate the control of the pandemic

Chieh-Fan Chen^1,2, Tung-Yuan Tsai³, Chen-Hui Yu^4,5, Hsiang-Lan Cheng⁶ and Ting-Yu Yeh⁷
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Affiliations: ¹ Department of Emergency, Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ² Faculty of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ³ Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ⁴ Department of Infection Control, Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ⁵ Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ⁶ Centers for Disease Control Ministry of Health and Welfare, The Executive Yuan, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC ⁷ Agricultural Biotechnology Laboratory, Auxergen Inc. and GreenWave Bioscience, Columbus Center, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
*Correspondence: Ting-Yu Yeh, [email protected]
Published: 27 May 2020 https://doi.org/10.1099/acmi.0.000133

Abstract

The studies of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have mainly focused on epidemiological and clinical features of patients, but transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 virus after patients have recovered is still poorly understood. Here we report a case with prolonged viral shedding of COVID-19 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. This patient started to show myalgia and malaise in Wuhan, and the onset of the fever was on days 7–14 of the illness. All clinical and radiological results returned to normal after day 26, however, viral shedding was still evident 14 days later. Sequence analysis of the genome of the Taiwanese SARS-CoV-2 isolate from this patient reveals new mutations in viral replicase and ORF3a, indicating that COVID-19 evolves very quickly. Prolonged viral shedding and new mutations in the viral genome could potentially complicate the control of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Received: 02/03/2020
Accepted: 01/04/2020
Published Online: 27/05/2020

Keyword(s): coronavirus , COVID-19 , RNA-dependent RNA polymerase , SARS-CoV-2 and transmission dynamics

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The Microbiology Society waived the open access fees for this article.

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Prolonged viral shedding and new mutations of COVID-19 could complicate the control of the pandemic

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Prolonged viral shedding and new mutations of COVID-19 could complicate the control of the pandemic

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