SARS-CoV-2 infection in HIV patients: We anticipated a worse scenario

Background: The immune suppression and deregulation associated with HIV infection anticipated a clinical and prognostic outcome facing SARS-CoV-2 co-infection According to the current literature, is still uncertain whether patients with HIV infection have greater morbidity or mortality in the course of COVID-19 Materials and methods: Demographic, epidemiological, clinical, laboratorial and therapeutic data was collected, regarding the HIVinfected population, diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, a hospital centre in Lisbon, Portugal, during the period between 16 March 2020 and 1 July 2020 Statistical analysis was performed in order to describe and analyse the different groups Results: During the study period, 18 436 RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 tests were performed at our hospital laboratory After excluding duplications, the tests revealed a positivity rate of 6 7% (n = 815) and a hospital admission rate of 33 8% (n = 276) Considering the tested population, 132 (1 08%) patients were HIV infected: 14 (1 72%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection and the remaining 118 (1 04%) showing a negative result Regarding HIV patients with SARSCoV-2 diagnosis (n = 14), only four (28 6%) meet hospitalisation criteria The HIV co-infected SARS-CoV-2 positive group showed a male predominance (64 29%) and a mean age of 53 14 years All of them were on antiretroviral therapy with undetectable plasma HIV RNA and a mean TCD4 + count of 664 9 cells/mm3 HIV patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection that required hospital admission had a mean age of 61 5 years versus 49 8 years of those who were managed on an ambulatory basis The immunological state between the two groups was similar Regarding the four HIV patients hospitalised, three patients (75%) presented with severe pneumonia and were admitted in the intensive care unit The average hospitalisation length in these patients was 51 7 days, the mean time to achieve RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 negative tests was 28 days and none of them died (mortality rate 0%) Conclusions: In our population, there was no evidence of a higher incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection related to HIV infection The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 infection in HIV chronic infected patients was similar to non-HIV patients