⁍ Study suggests exposure to the mosquito-transmitted illness may provide some level of immunity against COVID-19.

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⁍ Places with lower coronavirus infection rates and slower case growth were locations that had suffered intense dengue outbreaks this year or last.

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⁍ Brazil has the world’s third highest total of COVID-19 with more than 4.4 million cases.

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– A new study out of Brazil suggests a possible link between the spread of dengue fever and a new virus that lives in the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Researchers found a correlation between the spread of the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, and past outbreaks of the mosquito-transmitted illness, Reuters reports. “This striking finding raises the intriguing possibility of an immunological cross-reactivity between dengue’s Flavivirus serotypes and SARS-CoV-2,’ the study said, referring to dengue virus antibodies and the novel coronavirus. “If proven correct, this hypothesis could mean that dengue infection or immunization with an efficacious and safe dengue vaccine could produce some level of immunological protection.” Miguel Nicolelis, the study’s lead author, tells Reuters the findings are particularly interesting because previous studies have shown that people with dengue antibodies in their blood can test falsely positive for COVID-19 antibodies even if they have never been infected by the coronavirus. “This indicates that there is an immunological interaction between two viruses that nobody could have expected, because the two viruses are from completely different families,” he says. The study compared the geographic distribution of SARS-CoV-2 cases with the spread of dengue in 2019 and 2020. Places with lower coronavirus infection rates and slower case growth were locations that had suffered intense dengue outbreaks this year or last, Nicolelis found. “In science, that happens, you’re shooting at one thing and you hit a target that you never imagined you would hit,” he says.