High prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A virus (H1N1) co-infection in dead patients in Northeastern Iran.

Hashemi, Seyed Ahmad; Safamanesh, Saghar; Zadeh-Moghaddam, Hamed Ghasem; Ghafouri, Majid; Amir, Azimian

In the last months of 2019, an outbreak of fatal respiratory disease started in Wuhan, China, and quickly spread to other parts of the world. It named COVID-19, and to date, thousands of cases of infection and death reported worldwide. The disease is associated with a wide range of symptoms that make it difficult to diagnose it accurately. The previous SARS pandemic in 2003, researchers found that the patients with fever, cough, or sore throat had a 5% influenza virus-positive rate. This finding sparked in our minds that the wide range of symptoms and also relatively high prevalence of death in our patients may be due to the co-infection with other viruses. Thus, we evaluate the co-infection of SARS-CoV-2 with other respiratory viruses in dead patients in North Khorasan. We evaluated the presence of influenza A/B virus, Human metapneumovirus, bocavirus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and parainfluenza viruses in 105 SARS-CoV-2 positive dead patients, using PCR and RT-PCR tests. We found co-infection with influenza virus in 22.3%, respiratory syncytial virus, and bocavirus in 9.7%, parainfluenza viruses in 3.9%, Human metapneumovirus in 2.9% and finally adenovirus in 1.9% of SARS-CoV-2 positive dead cases. The highlights of our findings are a high prevalence of co-infection with influenza A virus and the monopoly of co-infection with Human metapneumovirus in children. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.