Researchers of the University of São Paulo in Brazil and Duke University, US found that states in Brazil which saw a large population that contracted dengue in 2019-2020 has a slower spread of Covid-19. A Reuters report said that the study was being published ahead of peer review on the MedRxiv preprint server and will be submitted to a scientific journal.
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The researchers found that during the first three months of the pandemic, about 17 ‘super-spreading’ cities accounted for upto 99 percent of the Covid-19 cases in Brazil and “states in which a large fraction of the population had contracted dengue fever in 2019-2020 reported lower Covid-19 cases and deaths”. They also claim that it took longer for such states to reach exponential community transmission, due to slower SARS-CoV-2 infection growth rates.
The study highlights a significant correlation between lower incidence, mortality, and growth rate of COVID-19 in populations in Brazil where the levels of antibodies to dengue were higher.
Brazil has the world’s third-highest total of Covid-19 infections with more than 45,60,083 cases, only behind the US and India. With 1.37 lakh fatalities, the country has the second-highest number.
Although this is not the first time this link has been created, earlier a study by CSIR’s Indian Institute of Chemical Biology which was led by Subhajit Biswas was the first to suggest that dengue antibodies can bind with SARS-CoV-2. This study has been published in MedRxiv as well, states “five of thirteen Dengue antibody-positive serum samples, dated 2017 (pre-dating the Covid-19 outbreak) produced false-positive results in SARS-CoV-2 IgG/IgM rapid strip tests.”