‘No chance’ of monkeypox and Covid-19 viruses merging
A senior virologist has ruled out the possibility of the Covid-19 and monkeypox viruses combining, after a case emerged in Italy of a patient being infected with monkeypox and Covid-19, in addition to having HIV.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Dr Anan Jongkaewwattana, director of Veterinary Health Innovation and Management Research Group at the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, explained that Covid-19’s genetic material is ribonucleic acid while monkeypox’s genetic material is deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), hence the two cannot merge.
Anan also cited a research titled “First case of monkeypox virus, SARS-CoV-2 and HIV co-infection”, published in the Journal of Infection https://bit.ly/3AANsaO on Friday.
The research said that the patient was an Italian 36-year-old male who had spent five days in Spain from June 16 to 20 before returning to Italy. He reportedly also had engaged in unprotected sexual activities with men while travelling.
The patient received two doses of Pfizer vaccine at the end of 2021 and got infected with Covid-19 at the beginning of 2022, which was likely the BA.1 subvariant.
Nine days after returning, he developed fever, sore throat, fatigue, headache and swollen lymph nodes.
After three days, a rash started to develop on his left arm and he also tested positive for Covid-19 on the same day.
After three more days, he was admitted to the hospital with pustules on his arms, torso, palms, fingers, legs and hips.
He was detected with the monkeypox virus, the BA 5.1 subvariant of Covid-19, and HIV-1 (with a viral load of 234,000 copies per millilitre of blood) on the following day.
Researchers speculated that he may not have known that he had HIV, and might have been infected recently because his CD4 lymphocyte count was unaltered with 812 cells/μL (normal value within 410-1590 cells/μL).
The patient stayed in the hospital for six days and still tested positive for Covid-19 and monkeypox, but almost all symptoms were resolved except for pustules on his skin hence the patient was discharged to be in home isolation.
His antigen test result for Covid-19 was negative after two days in home isolation. Six days later (eight days in home isolation), he took another test for the monkeypox virus and the result was still positive while crusts had healed almost completely, leaving small scars.
There was no information on whether monkeypox from him could have spread to other people within 29 days.
Researchers deduced that the patient was infected with monkeypox first and caught Covid-19 during the monkeypox’s incubation period.
