Published: Less than 2 hours ago
The 36-year-old Italian went on a short holiday to Spain.
What happened next is now described in a medical journal.
The doctors’ discovery makes him unique in the world.
The 36-year-old sought treatment at home in Sicily after holidaying for five days in the Spanish capital earlier this summer.
The doctors ran a series of tests on the man and he turned out to be positive for covid-19, monkeypox and HIV at the same time.
A discovery that makes him unique, says Sky News.
Pain and itching
The story is told in a scientific article that has now been published in the Journal of Infection.
Nine days after returning from Madrid on June 20, the man developed a high fever, sore throat, severe fatigue, headache and groin pain.
A couple of days later, the man, who was double vaccinated, tested positive for covid-19.
Later that day, he felt an itch on his left arm that developed into painful blisters. The symptoms got worse and three days later the man sought emergency care again, is stated in the article according to Sky News.
He was taken to an infectious disease department where he told the doctors that he had previously been treated for syphilis and had also been tested for HIV, but had then been negative.
Because of his symptoms and his infection history, the doctors ran a series of tests and then discovered that in addition to the coronavirus, he also carried monkeypox and HIV.
Got better after treatment
During the third day in hospital, the blisters dried to crusts and his condition improved. The 36-year-old has started treatment for his HIV infection and he was discharged from the hospital.
The doctors behind the newly published study believe that history shows the necessity to find out the patient’s background properly in connection with diagnosis and to know that both viruses, covid-19 and monkeypox, can appear in the body at the same time.
It is written that certain symptoms – fever, lymph node enlargement. headache, sore throat and fatigue – are shared by both viruses and that it can therefore be difficult to make the correct diagnosis.
A further complicating factor is that not everyone infected with monkeypox develops blisters. In addition, covid-19 can cause itching and rashes in some cases.
They believe that the patient can expose others to unnecessary risks if one is content with testing for only one of the viruses.
“May overlap”
The authors write in the article that the man stated in the contact with the care that he had unprotected sex with men during the holidays in Spain.
“This case shows how monkeypox and covid-19 can overlap and confirms that obtaining the patient’s history and sexual habits is crucial to making the correct diagnosis,” the article reads according to Sky News.
It is also noted that it is remarkable that he was still positive for monkeypox 20 days after the supposed moment of infection and that the HIV test showed that he had been infected with that virus relatively recently.
According to the article, more than 16,000 people in more than 74 countries have been infected with monkeypox since January 2022. The now dominant covid-19 variants account for more than a million cases a day.