A study published this month (May 2021) in the journal
Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests that people who have had dengue in the past are twice as likely to develop symptoms of Covid-19 if they are infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The findings of the study were based on an analysis of blood samples from 1,285 inhabitants of Mâncio Lima, a small town in the state of Acre, part of Brazil’s Amazon region.
Principal investigator and University of São Paulo’s Biomedical Sciences Institute (ICB-USP) professor Dr Marcelo Urbano Ferreira said: “Our results show that the populations most exposed to dengue, possibly owing to socio-demographic factors, are precisely those that are most at risk falling very sick if they’re infected by SARS-CoV-2.