• virology
• clinical chemistry
• microbiology

HIV may be considered as a differential diagnosis for patients who present with prolonged fever and respiratory symptoms. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several patients from our institution have had a simultaneous screening test for serum HIV antigen/antibodies as well as a nasopharyngeal swab for SARS-CoV-2 real-time reverse transcription PCR (rRT-PCR) on presentation to the hospital. While the molecular results often have a delayed turnaround time in light of increased testing volume, HIV screen performed as a chemiluminescent immunoassay on our Abbott Architect platform (Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Illinois, USA) has a testing time of only 30 min. Herein, we retrospectively reviewed and identified two positive COVID-19 cases on rRT-PCR who concurrently tested reactive for HIV on the Architect, with further confounding results.

Both patients were admitted and tested in the same month. Our first patient was a man in his early 20s who had no significant medical history, presenting with a persistent fever for 2 days, dry cough and pharyngitis. He was not on any long-term medications. His initial laboratory investigations revealed …