[throwii]

I've read that COVID-19 can sometimes be found inside the body even after testing negative for some time. This being a reason for continued weakness and impairment after infection.

Could this possibly continued infection lead to faster mutation, or is the amount of people infected the cause for the rapid mutations, or something else?

[edh649]

It's suspected that this mutation arose from a single patient who had a long case of COVID-19. Here's an interesting pre-print study on an individual (not the one from this mutation) who harboured many mutations over a 101-day period. [https://www.cogconsortium.uk/news_item/persistent-sars-cov-2...]

In terms of this strain, the actual rate of mutation is higher (5.6E-4 nucleotide changes/site/year vs 5.3E-4) [https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati...]