Distinguishing COVID-19 from influenza pneumonia in the early stage through CT imaging and clinical features

Zhiqi Yang; Daiying Lin; Xiaofeng Chen; Jinming Qiu; Shengkai Li; Ruibin Huang; Hongfu Sun; Yuting Liao; Jianning Xiao; Yanyan Tang; Guorui Liu; Renhua Wu; Xiangguang Chen; Zhuozhi Dai

However, false-negative cases using RT-PCR have been reported in several studies (29-31). Serum antibody test was shown to have good performance for the diagnosis of COVID-19, with sensitivity of 88.66% and specificity of 90.63% (32). Because it likely takes the body one to three weeks to produce the antibodies, antibody test is unable to diagnose the illness in the early stage. To et al (33) found that IgG or IgM antibody increased for most patients at 10 days or later after symptom onset. Therefore, imaging and clinical findings have the advantage to reflect the disease earlier. To our best knowledge, our study is the first to evaluate the significant statistical difference of CT imaging and clinical . CC-BY 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.