All herpesviruses share a characteristic ability to remain Virus latency within the body over long periods.

Virus latency is not to be confused with clinical latency during the incubation period when a virus is not dormant.

Even when clinical symptoms of chickenpox have resolved, VZV remains dormant in the nervous system of the infected person (virus latency), in the trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia.

Virus latency (or viral latency) is the ability of a pathogenic virus to lie dormant (latent) within a cell, denoted as the lysogenic part of the viral life cycle.