kolkata ongoing research by an indian institute of chemical biology iicb scientist in kolkata has indicated that the severity of covid has been less in dengueprone areasin april 2020 csirindian institute of chemical biology iicb virologist subhajit biswas coined the term dengue covid conundrum talking about how covid19 severity and mortality were observably less in highly dengueendemic countries including indiaover the last two years international scholars focused on the questions posed by biswas is preexposure to dengue protective against covid and viceversa and can dengue vaccines be repurposed to immunize against covid study has led to increasingly conclusive evidence that an inverse relationship exists between the two virusesin july 2020 biswas conducted the first lab study and the findings confirmed his observation it showed that prepandemic dengue samples produced false positive results in covid antibody teststhat year biswass results which indicate that there was an antigenic correlation between covid and dengue were cited in a public policy report by the ministry of health and family welfare in 2021 and early 2022 doctors and virologists from china sri lanka and indonesia reported that the inverse is true as well that there appears to be low instances of dengue in the postpandemic time biswas argues that this further establishes that covid and dengue have an inverse relation that is dengue exposure reduces the risk and severity of covid while covid reduces the risk and severity of denguefollowing the series of experiments conducted by iicb scientists across the world conducted similar studies which led to the same conclusion these studies include one by miguel nicolelis of duke university demonstrating that covid severity and mortality were lower in brazil in pockets where there were high instances of dengue this was further backed up by a study by brazilian professor silvestre on 2000 covid patients in brazil which found that those without previous dengue exposure had higher risk of deathin the same year an african public policy report also cited biswass study in august 2020 a team of virologists from israel confirmed biswass observation and conducted tests that showed 22 serological crossreactivity between the two viruses from israeltalking about the implication of this discovery biswas concluded the fact that there is a mutual antigenic relationship between these two very different viruses leads us to believe that there is a level of cross protection against the diseases caused by these two different family viruses i believe what we should focus right now on the need for specific serological tests that look at the future of how to diagnose these two viruses differentially