A recent study from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University in China found that patients with coronavirus disease COVID-19 often have fever and cough as the common initial symptoms.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The lead author is Wei-jie Guan, Ph.D. from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University.
The team analyzed data for 1,099 patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 from 552 hospitals in China.
The primary composite endpoint was admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the use of mechanical ventilation, or death.
They found that the primary composite endpoint occurred in 6.1% of patients, including 5.0%, 2.3%, and 1.4% who were admitted to the intensive care unit, underwent invasive mechanical ventilation, and died, respectively.
Among the patients, only 1.9% had a history of direct contact with wildlife.
Almost three-quarters (72.3%) of nonresidents of Wuhan had contact with residents of Wuhan, including 31.3% who had visited the city.
Fever (43.8% on admission, 88.7% during hospitalization) and cough (67.8%) were the most common symptoms, while diarrhea was uncommon (3.8%). There was a four-day median incubation period.
Ground-glass opacity was the most common radiologic finding with chest computed tomography (CT) on admission (56.4%); 17.9% of patients with non-severe disease and 2.9% with severe disease had no radiologic or CT abnormality.
In 83.2% of the patients, lymphocytopenia was present on admission.
The team says some patients with COVID-19 do not have a fever or radiologic symptoms on initial checking, which has complicated the diagnosis.
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