Vol. 7, Issue 5, Part A (2020)

Author(s): Dipanjan Dey, Varun Tyagi and Santana Saikia

Abstract: The prevailing COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc all around the world taking the lives of more than one million people. While the entire world is struggling hard to combat this pandemic; unfortunately, the burden has been further intensified by another fatal mosquito vector borne disease-dengue, particularly in dengue-endemic nations. The shared clinical features like fever, aches, respiratory ailments and so on by both the viral disease has led to the difficulty in their diagnosis and also to distinguish one from the other. In this regard, cases of misdiagnosis due to false positive test result has also been reported in some places. Hence the co-occurrence and co-infection of COVID-19 and dengue is indeed a great threat to public health in dengue endemic nations. This article aims to provide an overview of epidemiology, transmission and shared clinical features of COVID-19 and dengue besides highlighting the issue of misdiagnosis of both under clinical setting. Scientific evidence proving the fact that mosquitoes do not transmit SARS-CoV-2 pathogen has also been discussed. The present scenario of dengue outbreak in India amidst the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic has also been highlighted.