June 10th, 2023

In April, Marc Johnson, a molecular virologist from the University of Missouri School of Medicine, noticed something startling in the wastewater around Columbus, Ohio: High levels of a previously unknown, significantly mutated lineage of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Not only was the lineage very different from any of the commonly circulating variants, it was a B.1.1 derivative, suggesting the person had been infected for more than two years. Adding to the mystery is the rate at which the affected individual is shedding the virus—exponentially higher than the average person infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Johnson told The Daily Beast that while the individual doesn’t pose a threat to the public, their own health “is likely affected.” He recently laid out his calculations on Twitter, writing: “I do not know of any persistent infections that shed this much virus without killing the patient… The closest would probably be [Hepatitis C], an infection that often ends in liver cancer.”

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