There have been reports about prolonged detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA and recurrence of PCR-positive tests in patients many weeks after recovery from COVID-19. This raised the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 RNAs can be reversetranscribed and integrated into the DNA of human cells. Zhang et al. (2021) investigated possibility whether transcription of the integrated sequences might account for some of the positive PCR tests seen in patients. They found that DNA copies of SARS-CoV-2 sequences can be integrated into the genome of infected human cells and evidence suggesting that a large fraction of the viral sequences are transcribed from integrated DNA copies, generating viral–host chimeric transcripts. Parry et al. (2021) and Smits et al. (2021) felt necessary to scrutinize the evidence presented. They showed that the data has been inappropriately interpreted and they reanalyzed published data. They found no evidence for genomic integration of the virus, despite demonstrated availability of the proposed machinery. The fact that retrotranscription and integration of the SARS-CoV-2 genome happens in patients at any notable frequency, or even at all, remains unlikely.