Fig. 1

Existence of active replicating SARS-CoV-2 in anal samples from positive retest patients. a Frequency of viral RNA detection in anal samples between the negative retest and positive retest groups. The percentage (%) and number (n) are labeled. The total case number (n) is shown under the pie chart. p Values (chi-square test) are indicated. b Viral detection in positive retest patients during the second admission. Throat and anal samples are shown. Neg. negative samples, Pos. positive samples. c sgmRNA reads in samples from positive retest patients. The read numbers were normalized to reads per million (RPM) to minimize sequencing size variation. Patient numbers are shown. The positive controls were two intracellular nucleic acid samples extracted from cells with actively replicating SARS-CoV-2 (dilution factor PC1: 1 × 10⁻⁴, PC2: 1 × 10⁻⁵). Red triangle, throat sample from Patient 08 during the first admission; red circle, anal sample from Patient 08 during the second admission; pink triangle, throat sample from Patient 12 during the second admission