TB and COVID-19 – a dangerous new combination?

ERS has covered COVID-19 rather comprehensively, but the co-infection TB/COVID-19 was never presented or discussed previously. Recent publications on this issue attracted top interest. For example, the ERJ Letter by Tadolini et al. 2020 was cited 91 times in one year (and generated a response cited 12 times), the Pulmonology article on Mortality of co-infected individuals (Motta et al, 2020) 57 times in 8 months, the EID article on impact of COVID-19 on TB services (Migliori GB, December 2020), 24 times in 4 months. In the last 12 months ECSMID has organised educational events on this (3 times), as well as other societies (ALAT, Guatemala Respir. Society, Singapore Society, WAIDID/GTN, US CDC and American TB controllers Association- 3 events) and WHO.

The proposed speaker is the coordinator of the publications above and, in collaboration with WHO, of the 2 existing global studies on TB and COVID-19. The first, clinical, is the individual-data global database which includes about 800 co-infected individuals from >40 countries. The second, involving 43 centres in 19 countries, is evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on health services. The event will take advantage of the unique information available from the two projects.

Educational aims:

By attending the webinar, participants will gain knowledge on:

• What needs to be discovered on the interactions between TB and COVID-19.
• The summary of the TB and COVID-19 interactions at the immunological, clinical and public health level.
• Signs and symptoms in TB/COVID-19 co-infected individuals.
• How to improve the approach to signs and symptoms to correctly diagnose the two conditions.
• The absorption of resources (manpower, economic) by TB/COVID-19 co-infected patients (oxygen use, invasive and non-invasive ventilation, etc.)
• Determinants of mortality in TB/COVID-19 co-infected patients.
• Impact of COVID-19 on TB services.
• How to take advantage of the clinical alert to intensify case-finding for TB infection and disease.
• Opportunities for collaborative research in this area.

Format

The format will be a lecture animated by Q&A and clinical stories which are embedded into the report of the novel information of the two global studies described above.

Topics

• What is known (or not) on the interactions between TB and COVID-19.
• TB and COVID-19 interactions at the immunological, clinical and public health level.
• Signs and symptoms in TB/COVID-19 co-infected patients.
• How to improve the clinical approach to signs and symptoms to correctly diagnose the two conditions.
• Absorption of specialised manpower and economic resources by TB/COVID co-infected patients.
• Mortality in TB/COVID-19 co-infected patients.
• Impact of COVID-19 on TB services.
• How to intensify case-finding for TB infection and disease under the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Evaluate opportunities for collaborative research in the area.

Learning outcomes

Following this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Describe what is known and what is not known on the interactions between TB and COVID-19.
• Discuss how TB and COVID-19 interact at the immunological, clinical and public health level.
• Describe the commonest signs and symptoms in TB/COVID-19 co-infected individuals.
• Revise critically how the clinical approach to signs and symptoms can be improved to correctly diagnose the two conditions.
• Understand how the TB/COVID co-infection can absorb specialised manpower and economic resources.
• Discuss the determinants of mortality in TB/COVID-19 co-infected patients.
• Describe how COVID-19 is impacting TB services.
• Identify ways to take advantage of the clinical alert to intensify case-finding for TB infection and disease.
• Evaluate opportunities for collaborative research in the area.

CME credit

An application for accreditation of this webinar has been made to the European Board for Accreditation in Pneumology (EBAP) for 1 CME credit per 1-hour attendance. If accredited, the CME credit will be granted upon attendance of at least 60 minutes during the live webinar only.

What is a webinar?

The webinar closely simulates a lecture-based teaching experience. The speaker can interact with the audience, just as in a classroom setting.

This webinar comprises a 40-minute lecture followed by a 20-minute question-and-answer session. During the webinar you will be asked to share your opinion on issues related to the topic using interactive polls.

All participants will be able to hear the lecturer and see the slides throughout the presentation. As a participant you will be able to pose questions or discuss ideas with the other participants via the text chat facility and the speaker will respond to the questions via the microphone.

Login guidelines

More information will be communicated in due course.

• Please log in to the webinar 20 minutes before it is scheduled to commence. If you have any technical difficulties whilst trying to log in or during the session, please contact e-learning@ersnet.org.
• Check Central European Summer Time.
• To achieve the best quality, we recommend stopping all other programmes and avoiding downloading anything from the internet during your connection to the lecture.
• Please also ensure that your audio settings are not set to mute and adjust the volume to a comfortable level.