Clinical characteristics of 34 COVID-19 patients admitted to ICU in Hangzhou, China

Yi Zheng; Lijun Sun; Mi Xu; Jian Pan; Yuntao Zhang; Xueling Fang; Qiang Fang; Hongliu Cai

In the IMV group with more severe illness, lymphocyte levels dropped progressively and more severe lymphopenia occurred compared to no-IMV group, which suggested that the severity of lymphocytopenia reflects the severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection. As the research of SARS-CoV infected cases shows that patients with more severe clinical illness, or patients who died, had significantly more profound lymphopenia [17] . The lymphocyte counts can gradually rise to normal level until discharge in a part of patients without IMV in our cohort. Lymphopenia was prolonged, and the lymphocyte returned towards normal after five weeks of illness in patients with SARS-CoV [17] infection or within 2-3 weeks after the disease onset in cases with severe pandemic H1N1 influenza A [18] . Further analysis in our cohort showed that T lymphocytopenia was more pronounced than B lymphocytopenia which was similar to previous study in Patients with SARS [19] . The mechanism behind the dynamics is not clear, which need to be confirmed in cell and animal experiments.