SARS‐CoV‐2 and HIV

Dear Editor,

We read the publication on “Co‐infection of SARS‐CoV‐2 and HIV in a patient in Wuhan city, China” with a great interest. Since HIV infection is a common disease in Asia, the concurrence between HIV infection and other disease is an interesting problem. The present case by Zhu et al ¹ might be the first report on coinfection of SARS‐CoV‐2 and HIV. Zhu et al ¹ noted that “HIV infection need to be regarded as vulnerable group” to COVID‐19. Nevertheless, there is no identified interrelationship between the two viral infections. In fact, despite there are many HIV‐infected patient and COVID‐19 outbreak expands to cover a large area in Asia, there are few observations on infection among HIV‐infected patients. In our setting, Thailand, where the COVID‐19 disease occurred after China, there is no case of infection among HIV‐infected patients despite there is an extremely high prevalence of HIV infection in this area. Regarding the case report by Zhu et al, ¹ the patient did not have antiviral therapy for HIV infection before. At present, antiviral drug is widely used for treatment of HIV‐infected patient and anti‐HIV drug is proposed as possible effective drug against SARS‐COV‐2. ² , ³ Therefore, HIV‐infected patients receiving standard anti‐HIV drug might not have increased risk for COVID‐19. On the other hand, there might be a lower risk than general population.