COVID-19 Infection and Transmission are Observably Less in Highly Dengue-endemic Countries

Subhajit Biswas; Soumi Sukla

doi:10.20944/preprints202004.0040.v1

Preprint Review Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

COVID-19 Infection and Transmission are Observably Less in Highly Dengue-endemic Countries

Version 1 : Received: 2 April 2020 / Approved: 3 April 2020 / Online: 3 April 2020 (15:48:36 CEST)
Version 2 : Received: 13 April 2020 / Approved: 14 April 2020 / Online: 14 April 2020 (08:49:03 CEST)
Version 3 : Received: 2 May 2020 / Approved: 5 May 2020 / Online: 5 May 2020 (03:00:34 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Journal reference: Clinical and Experimental Investigations 2020
DOI: 10.31487/j.CEI.2020.02.05

Abstract

We observed that global severity maps of ongoing dengue epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic do not overlap. Countries where dengue is highly endemic (>1.5 million cases/year) appear to be less hit by COVID-19 pandemic in terms of infection and transmission. Other evidences also support our proposition that pre-exposure to other wide-spread viral infections like dengue may thwart the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Subject Areas

Dengue; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; epidemiology; infection; mortality; cross-protection; Dengue vaccine; ELISA; Dengvaxia

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Comments (4)

Comment 1

Received: 27 April 2020
Commenter: Lucas Meira costa
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.

Comment: I had come across the same observation here in Brazil. Cities with a history of Dengue epidemies had a slower covid increase. Add-ons to the false positive Dengue results occurred on Singapore, I believe there might be a crossaction of the antibodies of one desease with the other.

+ Respond to this comment

Response 1 to Comment 1

Received: 3 May 2020
Commenter:

Subhajit Biswas
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.

Comment: Dear Lucas, Thank you for sharing your observation. Please see version 2 of our article (link: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0040/v2) for more data and updates on our observations. You are right-since there is evidence of cross-reaction of antibodies between the two viruses, the two viruses i.e. SARS-CoV-2 and dengue virus must share antigenic similarity. Based on this observations, we believe that already available (licensed & safe) live attenuated dengue vaccines may be the best choice we have" right now" to immunize people people in Europe, USA, Iran and China and save thousands of lives in the coming days before safe and tested SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antivirals become available. "Antibody-dependent enhancement" should not be a big problem in the post-vaccinated individuals as dengue is not endemic in the above COVID-19-worst hit countries. Our proposition can be easily tested in animal models by vaccinating experimental animals like monkeys with live dengue vaccines and then infecting them with SARS-CoV-2 and comparing protection with respect to infected but non-vaccinated controls. Best wishes, Subhajit.

Comment 2

Received: 5 May 2020
Commenter:

Subhajit Biswas
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.

Comment: Dear Readers,

Please see version 3 of our article (link: given above) for more data and updates on our observations.

Since there is evidence of cross-reaction of antibodies between the two viruses, the two viruses i.e. SARS-CoV-2 and dengue virus must share antigenic similarity.

Based on observations of "non-overlap"between dengue and COVID-19 global maps & serological cross-reactions between the two viruses, we believe that already available (licensed & safe) live attenuated dengue vaccines may be the best choice we have" right now" to immunize people in Europe, USA, Iran and China and save thousands of lives in the coming days before safe and tested SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and antivirals become available.

"Antibody-dependent enhancement" should not be a big problem in the post-vaccinated individuals as dengue is not endemic in the above COVID-19-worst hit countries.

Our proposition can be easily tested in animal models by vaccinating experimental animals like monkeys with live dengue vaccines and then infecting them with SARS-CoV-2 and comparing protection with respect to infected but non-vaccinated controls.

Best wishes,
Authors.

+ Respond to this comment

Comment 3

Received: 19 June 2020
Commenter: Abinash Mallick
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.

Comment: Further computational modeling based approach was perceived to validate this hypothesis.
Please find the preprint link of the research article:
https://osf.io/dutx4/

+ Respond to this comment

Your full name

Your affiliation information (e.g., name of your university/institution/organization)

Not displayed online.

Your Email address (not made public)

Please leave your comment to this article below.

Mathematical equations can be typed in either LaTeX formats \\[ ... \\] or $$ ... $$, or MathML format <math> ... </math>. Try the LaTeX or MathML example.

Type equation:

Preview:

Copy equation into message below

Close menu

Please click a symbol to insert it into the message box below:

Please enter the link here:

Optionally, you can enter text that should appear as linked text:

Copy link into message below

Close menu

Please enter or paste the URL to the image here (please only use links to jpg/jpeg, png and gif images):

Copy image into message below

Close menu

Type author name or keywords to filter the list of references in this group (you can add a new citation under Bibliography):

No existing citations in Discussion Group

Wikify editor is a simple editor for wiki-style mark-up. It was written by MDPI for Sciforum in 2014. The rendering of the mark-up is based on Wiky.php with some tweaks. Rendering of mathematical equations is done with MathJax. Please send us a message for support or for reporting bugs.

Close menu

Please declare any conflicts of interest you may have with this paper, financial or otherwise.

I do not have a conflict of interest

I would like to declare a conflict of interest

Display my name on the website I want to get recognition for my comment on Publons

[what’s this?]. Link your accounts here

Captcha

Renew

I accept the following conditions:

Comments must follow the standards of professional discourse and should focus on the scientific content of the article. Insulting or offensive language, personal attacks and off-topic remarks will not be permitted. Comments must be written in English. Preprints reserves the right to remove comments without notice. Readers who post comments are obliged to declare any competing interests, financial or otherwise.