Other viruses found in COVID-19 patients

Сoronavirus may be responsible for other symptoms that patients develop, said scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine.

As shown by a study posted on JAMA, a person can have several viruses that cause respiratory diseases.

The authors of the study examined a small group of patients with a laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Other pathogens that can cause diseases of the respiratory system - bacteria and viruses - were found in 20.7% of them.

Specialists also examined 1,217 nasopharyngeal swabs from patients with cold, and 9.5% of them had COVID-19. Additional respiratory infections were detected in 24 coronavirus patients. The most frequent ‘companions’ of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus were rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, and other coronaviruses (4%).

All this suggests that the combination of SARS-CoV-2 with other respiratory pathogens is more common than reported.