SARS‐CoV‐2 and HIV

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.