LAUSR

Background: COVID-19 caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS- COV-2) has emerged as a global pandemic. There is a con- tinuous debate whether to consider allergic respiratory disorders as protective factor or as a risk factor for COVID -19. At the same time severity of COVID 19 is found to be more if patient’s level of disease control is poor according to some studies. Hence there is a need to find the prevalence of allergic respiratory diseases among COVID 19 positive cases. HCW are taken as the study population as they have equal COVID exposer risk and also good level of disease control. AIM: To find the prevalence of allergic respiratory diseases among COVID positive HCW. Methods: Nasopharyngeal samples of HCW collected from May 15 to November 15 2020 were subjected to RT PCR for detection of SARS COV -2 RNA and the positive cases were noted for history of allergic respiratory disorders like chronic rhinosinusitis, asthma from the clinical information provided while sample collection. Results: Out of total 912 Health Care Workers tested for COVID 19 in first 5 months by RT PCR 121 were COVID positive, among them 24(19.8%) have known history of allergic respiratory diseases of which 4(3.3%) were known for Chronic Rhinosinusitis, 15(12.3%) were asthmatic, 5(4.13%) have both CRS and asthma, further results will be provided at the time of presentation. Conclusions:Prevalence of allergic respiratory diseases helps in finding out if it’s a risk factor or not and also if any pro- tective role against COVID 19 to help in further studies