Human rhinovirus infection blocks SARS-CoV-2 replication within the respiratory epithelium: implications for COVID-19 epidemiology

Abstract

Virus-virus interactions influence the epidemiology of respiratory infections. However, the impact of viruses causing upper respiratory infections on SARS-CoV-2 replication and transmission is currently unknown. Human rhinoviruses cause the common cold and are the most prevalent respiratory viruses of humans. Interactions between rhinoviruses and co-circulating respiratory viruses have been shown to shape virus epidemiology at the individual host and population level. Here, we examined the replication kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 in the human respiratory epithelium in the presence or absence of rhinovirus. We show that human rhinovirus triggers an interferon response that blocks SARS-CoV-2 replication. Mathematical simulations show that this virus-virus interaction is likely to have a population-wide effect as an increasing prevalence of rhinovirus will reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases.

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© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Supplementar

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiab147

Repository URI

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/236452/