DOI: 10.5061/dryad.rbnzs7hbj
title: Inverse Correlation between Dengue Fever and COVID-19 spread in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia

description: Here we investigated whether the dengue fever pandemic of 2019-2020 may
 have influenced COVID-19 incidence and spread around the world. In Brazil,
 the geographic distribution of dengue fever was highly complementary to
 that of COVID-19. This was accompanied by an inverse correlation between
 COVID-19 and dengue fever incidence that could not be explained by
 socioeconomic factors. This inverse correlation was observed for 5,016
 Brazilian municipalities reporting COVID-19 cases, 558 micro- and 137
 meso-regions, 27 states and 5 regions. Brazilian states with high
 population levels of dengue IgM in 2020 exhibited: (i) lower COVID-19 case
 and death incidence, (ii) slower infection growth rates, and (iii) took
 longer to accumulate COVID-19 cases. No such inverse correlations were
 observed for the chikungunya virus, which is also transmitted by the Aedes
 aegypti mosquito. The same inverse correlation between COVID-19 and dengue
 fever incidence was observed for 145 locations (66 countries and the 64
 states of Mexico and Colombia) in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.
 Countries with high dengue incidence took longer to accumulate COVID-19
 cases than those without dengue. Although the dataset considered has
 quality and availability limitations, these findings raise the possibility
 of an immunological cross-reaction between dengue virus serotypes and
 SARS-CoV-2, which could have led to partial immunological protection for
 COVID-19 in dengue infected communities. However, further studies are
 necessary to better test this hypothesis.
description: COVID-19 incidence in Brazil was obtained from Brasil.io
 (https://brasil.io/covid19/), which compiles data from all the Brazilian
 state health agencies and was accessed on 2020-10-06. The period
 considered in the analysis was from the first COVID-19 case to the 26th
 epidemiological week of 2020 (which ends on the 27 th of June 2020). The
 COVID-19 incidence in countries around the world was<br> collected
 from Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science
 and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins<br> University (JHU)
 (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/). State-level data were
 considered for Colombia and Mexico, and a country-level was considered for
 the other countries under<br> investigation. Dengue epidemiological
 and serological data was compiled from data published regularly in the
 official epidemiological bulletins during 2019 and 2020 by the Brazilian
 Ministry of Health (Ministério da Saúde, 2020a and 2020b). The incidence
 available via<br> DATASUS (2020) considered the period from the 27th
 epidemiological week of 2019 to the 26th epidemiological week of 2020.
 This incidence for Latin American countries was collected from the Pan
 American Health Organization (www.paho.org), which also<br> provides
 dengue incidence data on a state level for Mexico. For Colombian states
 data was collected from bulletins made available by the Colombian Health
 Ministry (https://www.minsalud.gov.co). For other countries considered
 data was collected from disease threat reports provided by the European
 Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - (ECDC -
 www.ecdc.europa.eu).
description: For more information about the datasets and the analysis of them
 please contact the authors.