Meningoencephalitis due to SARS-CoV-2 and tuberculosis co-infection: a case report from Indonesia

Introduction: The novel coronavirus which firstly detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has been known to cause neurological dysfunction either by directly or indirectly infecting the brain. Case: We are reporting a case of meningoencephalitis due to co-infection of M. tuberculosis and SARS-CoV-2 in a hospital in Indonesia. A 26-year-old gentleman working as a courier in a Sars-Cov-2 red zone without adequate protection complained frequent headaches since a month to admission. M. tuberculosis was detected on very low level by GenXpert (R) and rapid test for SARS-CoV-2 was nonreactive. Repeated GenXpert (R) showed detected M. tuberculosis with undetected rifampicin resistance. Subsequent CSF SARS-CoV-2 PCR was positive although the oropharyngeal swab was negative. Conclusion: The report of pulmonary co-infection of TB and SARS-COV-2 has been published, however, to our best knowledge there has been no report of neurological co-infection to date. We are reporting the report of CNS co-infection from our country.