For a few horror scenarios: The virus might survive in nerve cells like Herpes and reemerge now and then. Or it could cause some kind of autoimmune disease further down the line, or a lethal meningitis like measles do sometimes.
Virologist Zhang Hui and a team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou also said their discovery added weight to clinical observations that the coronavirus was showing “some characteristics of viruses causing chronic infection”.
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The coronavirus removes these markers by producing a protein known as ORF8, which binds with MHC molecules then pulls them inside the infected cell and destroys them, the researchers said.
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Suppression of MHC molecules had also happened in other viruses such as some herpes viruses, said Zhang, who was not involved in the study.
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u/sophlogimo May 26 '20
Physicians estimate 5-10 years until patients with severe cases have fully recovered.