Prevalence and Types of Respiratory Co-Infections found in COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

An unprecedented challenge to the healthcare system worldwide has resulted from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As per the estimates of year 2022 over 314 million cases and over 5.5 million deaths had been reported since the pandemic began. The respiratory system is the primary system affected by COVID-19, which is a multisystem disease. It usually starts as an upper respiratory infection that spreads to the lungs and causes interstitial pneumonia, severe respiratory failure, a systemic inflammatory response, and multi-organ dysfunction in the most extreme instances. The environment that a viral infection allows concurrent or secondary bacterial co-infections has been created by the co-evolution of viral and bacterial respiratory pathogens, increasing the morbidity and mortality of respiratory viral infections and significantly increasing the burden of disease on society. Because COVID-19 mass vaccination campaigns are still in their early phases, underlying co-infections and how they are treated could have significant impact on disease morbidity and related patient care. Growing evidence of research demonstrates that microbial co-infection raises the likelihood of human illness severity. The prevalence of co-infection ranges from 0%- 20% among COVID-19 patients. Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Haemophilus influenzae were the most prevalent bacterial co-infections in all COVID-19 patients along with certain other viral coinfections. Despite extensive study on viral-bacterial co-infections, there are few studies that examine how they affected the COVID-19 pandemic