Jennifer Rigby

LONDON, (Reuters) – Leading South African scientists will investigate COVID-19 in conjunction with HIV amid growing evidence suggesting that new variants of coronavirus could have been created by the combination of these pandemics.

Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, which was responsible for alerting the world about Omicron COVID variant Omicron in COVID, stated that the time had come for an “systematic investigation” into the consequences of untreated HIV in patients who get COVID-19.

A number of studies, including one published by the team last week, have found that people with weakened immune systems – such as patients with untreated HIV – can suffer from persistent coronavirus infections, often for months.

It remains in people’s systems, and may accumulate mutations that could give it an edge.

This could explain Omicron’s development, according to some researchers. Other scientists suspect it might have evolved in animals and then spread into humans.

Tongai Maponga is the author of the latest paper. He was also a researcher at Stellenbosch University.

“The very few cases we have seen so far are being described by random surveillance,” he said to Reuters.

“But I think soon we will be doing something more systematic to look specially at these severely immunocompromised HIV patients, to see what is going on.”

According to him, the research would be focused on two aspects: the patient and their COVID-19-infected systems as well as proving if new variants may have emerged.

“If so, we should up our diagnostics and make sure that patients get timely diagnosis and treatment.” he said.

Saoirse Fitzgerald, StopAids advocacy manager, stated that HIV testing had been severely affected by the pandemic, but that it was vital to deal with both.

“A COVID response without HIV is insufficient public health,” she stated.

The number of patients involved in this stage was unknown.

South Africa is home to the largest HIV epidemic in the world, 8.2 million of its citizens. Around 71% and 45% respectively of the adults are receiving treatment.

Maponga added: “We must reiterate that we do not want to cause unnecessary stigma around HIV – this is the risk we take by raising these questions, but I think we need to be considering them.”