In addition to the potent antiviral effect of PEG IFN-α (i.e., no de novo infections, see Note I in S1 Text) as in other reports [46], our analysis demonstrated that PEG IFN-α treatment significantly reduced the half-life of cccDNA to around 49 days (Fig 3E and Table 2), implying PEG IFN-α promotes cccDNA degradation. Here, IFNA1 is linked to infection.