Cavitary pulmonary tuberculosis with COVID-19 coinfection

The COVID-19 pandemic has strained the healthcare system worldwide, leading to an approach favoring judicious resource allocation. A focus on resource preservation can result in anchoring bias and missed concurrent diagnosis. Coinfection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has implications beyond morbidity at the individual level and can lead to unintended TB exposure to others. We present six cases of COVID-19 with newly diagnosed cavitating pulmonary tuberculosis to highlight the significance of this phenomenon and favorable outcomes if recognized early. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).