COVID‑19 in the population of tuberculosis patients

Yusupalieva Muyassar Mansurovna, Chudinova Darya Sergeevna, Zaurova Mariam Borisovna, Enzel Daria Anatolyevna

Unlike COVID-19, tuberculosis is an ancient infection. WHO declared it a global health emergency back in 1993. Over the past decade, the incidence of tuberculosis has been slowly declining, and mortality has decreased by almost a third, although the global burden remains significant, amounting to more than 10 million newly ill people per year. Data from the latest WHO global tuberculosis report shows an 18% reduction in the number of TB cases in 2020 compared to 2019. Until 2002, coronaviruses were considered as agents causing mild upper respiratory tract diseases with extremely rare deaths. In December 2019, the first case of infection with a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) was reported in Wuhan (China). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. At one time, the 2003 SARS epidemic was caused by the SARS-CoV virus. During the pandemic period, more than 8 thousand cases of diseases were registered in 37 countries, 774 of them with fatal outcomes. No new cases have been registered since 2004. Currently, the main source of infection is a sick person, including in the incubation period. The purpose of this article is to review the interactions between COVID-19 and tuberculosis, including the impact of COVID-19 on tuberculosis outcomes at the population level, the clinical picture and diagnosis of tuberculosis-COVID–19 coinfection, the impact of COVID-19, the level of patients on management and treatment. In addition, tuberculosis patients were considered, as well as tuberculosis prognosis and innovative strategies that can be used to mitigate the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the global burden of tuberculosis, including lessons learned from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords:Tuberculosis; Covid-19; SARS-CoV-2; co-infenction; multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB); extensively drug-resistant tuberculoss (XDR-TB); distress syndrome (ARDS).