Covid-19 and malaria co-infection management in post liver transplant- a case report

ABSTRACT

The current pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posted unprecedented challenges to the community of clinicians in various aspects, ranging from prompt and early diagnosis to preventing complications. What makes the challenge even tougher is to be able to distinguish between diseases presenting with similar complaints, especially in tropical regions, and yet be able to treat judiciously and give a targeted treatment. The level of difficulty escalates when a patient with Solid-Organ Transplant (SOT) on immunosuppressive therapy presents to the clinician as suspected COVID-19 along with a co-infection. Incidences like these carry an increased burden of higher morbidity and mortality, with or without immunosuppression, if not timely diagnosed and judiciously treated, thus heralding the need to be vigilant in the current pandemic. Thus, to the best of our knowledge, this was the first documented and successfully treated case of a patient with past history of Liver Transplant (LT) with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia with co-existing Plasmodium vivax (P.vivax) malaria.