Clinical features of COVID-19 patients in one designated medical institutions in Chengdu, China (preprint)

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To study the clinical characteristics of patients infected with the 2019 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) responsible for coronavirus disease (COVID-2019).METHODS: Data were collected from 20 patients admitted to the Pidu District People’s Hospital in Chengdu from January 26, 2020 to March 1, 2020 with laboratory-confirmed SARS-Cov-2 infection. Clinical data were collected using the World Health Organization (WHO) nCoV CASE RECORDFORM Version 1.2 28JAN2020, which includes parameters such as temperature, epidemiological characteristics, social network, history of exposure, and incubation period. If information was unclear, the team reviewed the original data and contacted patients directly if necessary.RESULTS: The median age of the 20 COVID-19 infected patients studied was 42.5 years. In this cohort, four patients became severely ill and one deteriorated rapidly during treatment. This patient was transferred to another medical center with an intensive care unit (ICU) for treatment. This patient died after admission to the ICU. Two of the twenty patients remained positive SARS-Cov-2 more than three weeks, and they were quarantined in a medical facility without medication. According to our analysis, all of the studied cases were infected by human-to-human transmission due to the lack of protective measures; transmission through contact within families requires confirmation. The most common symptoms at onset of illness were fever in 13 (65%) patients, cough in 9 (45%), headache in 3 (15%), fatigue in 6 (30%), diarrhea in 3 (15%), and abdominal pain in 2 (10%). Six patients (30%) developed shortness of breath upon admission. The median time from exposure to onset of illness was6.5 days (interquartile range 3.25–9 days), and from the onset of symptoms to first hospital admission was 3.5 (1.25–7) days.CONCLUSION: Compared with patients infected with SARS-Cov-2 in Wuhan (up to the end of February 2020), the symptoms of patients in one hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, were relatively mild and patients were discharged from the hospital after only a short stay. However, the fasting blood glucose of the infected individuals was found to be slightly elevated because of the state of emergency. The dynamic changes in lymphocyte levels can predict disease status of COVID-19. They are also suggestive of changes in mean platelet volume during disease progression. This suggests that the patients had mild cases of COVID-19. However, because there is no effective drug treatment for COVID-19, it is important to detect and identify severe cases from mild cases early.