Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

How COVID Can Reactivate Hidden Infections #shorts

6 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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Dr. Aaron Hartman found that most long-COVID patients don't have detectable SARS-CoV-2 in their cells, yet show fatigue and post-exertional malaise. He argues COVID triggers immune dysregulation that reactivates latent infections like Lyme disease, EBV, or HSV-1, not the virus itself.

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—And we tested a lot of people who had long COVID symptoms, and I think probably one of dozens had spike protein in their monocytes. So they were showing up with fatigue and post-exertional malaise and like kind of the whole group of findings. And in most instances, it wasn't actually COVID that was doing it. It was that COVID had triggered another cascade of events in a person who had previously been exposed to mold or somebody who maybe had Lyme disease. Maybe it was reactivating the Lyme. So kind of the insult to the immune system and the dysregulation that resulted from that. We maybe have Epstein-Barr, we maybe have Lyme, we maybe have HSV-1, we maybe have— I mean, there are a number of different things that could be findings on the other side.