Co-Infection with Plasmodium vivax and COVID-19 in Thailand

Abstract

With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, healthcare systems not only had to address the pressing clinical needs of the COVID-19 pandemic but anticipate the effect on and of other conditions and diseases. This was of particular concern in areas of the world endemic with malaria, a disease which takes hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This case report from Thailand describes a 25-year-old man diagnosed with Plasmodium vivax, who was then found to be co-infected with COVID-19. Both conditions can have overlapping acute febrile illness symptoms which may delay or complicate diagnoses. He had no prior history of malaria and had received two vaccinations against COVID-19. His clinical course was mild with no pulmonary complications or oxygen requirement, and he responded well to treatments for both conditions. Three months after cure, he again contracted COVID-19 but did not experience any P. vivax relapse. Review of the available literature produced less than 10 publications describing co-infections with P. vivax and COVID-19; nonetheless, in endemic areas, vigilance for both diseases should continue, as co-infections could significantly alter the course of clinical management and prognosis as well as affect the healthcare staff caring for these patients.

Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Stochastic Malaria and COVID-19 Co-infection Model

“…To obtain the stochastic basic reproduction number, we consider the co-infected class of stochastic model (4).…”

“…There are several studies that have done on co-dynamics of COVID-19 including TB [23], Dengue [33], Cholera [16] as well as co-dynamics of Malaria, see, e.g. [1,31,4]. Malaria and COVID-19 diseases have affected millions of people globally, and much more in tropical countries, where the emergence of COVID-19 has increased the burden of diagnosis and treatment of malaria [30] because of the similarities in presenting symptoms leading to several health challenges [17].…”

Protozoan co-infections and parasite influence on the efficacy of vaccines against bacterial and viral pathogens

“…Moreover, most of the available reports about SARS-CoV2 co-infections describe concomitant bacteria, fungus and other viral infections, especially associated with respiratory infections and pneumonia. In depth studies have not been conducted for SARS-CoV2 and protozoan co-infections; however a few reports are available showing co-infections occur with Toxoplasma (Montazeri et al, 2022), Plasmodium (Raham, 2021;Boonyarangka et al, 2022), Babesia (Jacobs and Siddon, 2021), Leishmania (Pikoulas et al, 2022) and Trypanosoma (Alberca et al, 2020). In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide malaria cases increased from 227 million in 2019 to 241 million in 2020 (World Health Organization, 2021) and a high rate of latent T. gondii infection was also found among COVID-19 patients with severe manifestations reported in the Middle East region (Montazeri et al, 2022).…”

Novel paradigm of mosquito-borne disease control based on self-powered strategy

“…Although recent studies have shown that mosquitoes do not transmit the COVID-19 virus, the COVID-19 global pandemic is hampering mosquito-borne disease control efforts, such as disrupting malaria services (5). This not only increases the risk of mosquito-borne pathogens transmission but also lead to a significant increase in the number of cases and deaths (6,7). According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, more than 700,000 deaths caused by mosquito-borne diseases annually (8).…”