How long is a piece of string? Duration of viral replication signal depends on the virus and the genetics of the immune system of the patient and their nutritional state and physical health.
Unknown whether there are masked modes, where an established immune response might hypothetically mop up reactivation signal before it can be detected.
As I understand it currently IgG is not regarded as signifying ongoing replication whereas IgM is regarded as signifying recent immune response to infection.
Only PCR is regarded as proof positive of active virus.
In the mid 1980s it was received wisdom in the NHS that viruses did not recur. I was told "that does not happen" referring to my report that HSV2 was recurring. This is patently untrue and received wisdom in GU medicine has since changed to accept herpes virus reactivation (while my own condition has subsequently been reconfirmed by multiple +ve PCR tests) proving lack of infallibility / omniscience on the part of the members of the medical profession. But that does not mean that every other medical conspiracy theory is true.
Preceding such fashionable fads and influences of political expedience on diagnosis, the medical consensus as evinced by some practitioners, accepted some people were more "delicate" than others and some illnesses especially EBV could reactivate for some people. I remember being warned about exactly that in the early 1980s after having EBV (confirmed by Paul Bunnell test) though what this really meant is anybody's guess. I was just told it was "really nasty" and told not to over do it. I wonder if such a description might have resulted from clinical observations of what we would now call ME, which at the time was considered post EBV relapse.
My more recent IgM assays do not indicate recent EBV activation though IgG confirms a prior infection, nevertheless there are occasional episodes when I feel the same characteristic EBV symptoms. There are people who will argue this is due to a memory effect but I know of no empirical evidence to support this theory. IMHO Occam's prefers the duck approach on a balance of probabilities, as a working hypothesis but of course one cannot claim certainty or provide medico-legal evidence on such a basis.
The association between EBV and subsequent health failure I was warned about makes me wonder whether EBV somehow set me up for other viruses to reactivate, because it is not just HSV2 which recurs symptomatically for me, theough it is the only one I can prove does.
If received medical wisdom was wrong once it can be wrong again. We dont fully understand the behaviour of viruses in vivo and we don't have testing systems which can regularly check for viral activity outside of the research context. One day we might but Theranos was a bust and the miniaturisation tech is not quite there yet but my hope is it will arrive in a decade or two, when we might all have 24/7 personalised medical testing of pee and poop and a daily pinprick of blood.
Until then we are mired in ignorance like the generations who came before us and suffered while they struggled their way out of the mud. We stand on their shoulders and while we owe them our gratitude, our duty to ourselves and the future is likewise to spend our today struggling for a better tomorrow. What else can we do?