CHINESE JOURNAL OF PARASITOLOGY AND PARASITIC DISEASES ›› 2020, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (4): 464-468.doi: 10.12140/j.issn.1000-7423.2020.04.011

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Consideration and recommendations for malaria blood testing during the COVID-19 pandemic

LI Mei(), XIA Zhi-gui*(), YIN Jian-hai, YAN He   

  1. Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology, Ministry of Public Health, Shanghai 200025, China
  • Received:2020-04-26 Online:2020-08-30 Published:2020-09-09
  • Contact: XIA Zhi-gui E-mail:limei@nipd.chinacdc.cn;xiazg@nipd.chinacdc.cn

Abstract:

With the ongoing global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, there is a risk of co-occurrence of malaria and COVID-19 in people returning from malaria-endemic areas abroad. In order to conduct timely, accurate and safe detection of malaria cases, ensuring early finding, diagnosis and treatment of imported malaria, we propose that facing the current pandemic situation, higher level of biosafety protective practice is needed for handling malaria blood samples with potential risk, use of rapid diagnostic test and nuclear acid detection method is the first choice, confirmation of Plasmodium species should be made based on consistency between at least two detection methods, and blood smears should be prepared with special procedures when necessary.

Key words: COVID-19, Malaria, Microscopic examination, Nucleic acid amplification tests, Rapid diagnostic test

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