Epidemiologic and Clinical Characteristics of 91 Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in Zhejiang, China: A retrospective, multi-centre case series

Guo-Qing Qian; Nai-Bin Yang; Feng Ding; Ada Hoi Yan Ma; Zong-Yi Wang; Yue-Fei Shen; Chun-Wei Shi; Xiang Lian; Jin-Guo Chu; Lei Chen; Zhi-Yu Wang; Da-Wei Ren; Guo-Xiang Li; Xue-Qin Chen; Hua-Jiang Shen; Xiao-Min Chen

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is highly contagious and spreads rapidly through human-to-human transmissions. 5, 6 As of 20 February, 75 571 confirmed cases had been reported in Mainland China and 1083 confirmed cases in 24 other countries and regions. Amongst the cases in Mainland China, 2239 cases died, 11 cases of death was reported from out of Mainland China. 7 There were 41 initial cases of COVID-19 that were directly or indirectly linked to the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as reported by Huang and colleagues. 8 The clinical features include fever, dry cough, dyspnea, myalgia, fatigue, decreased leukocyte counts and computed tomography (CT) evidence of pneumonia. 8 Subsequently, Chen and colleagues reported 99 cases from a single centre of Wuhan, but the severe and non-severe cases were not compared. 9 And then Wang and colleagues published a study based on 138 hospitalized patients from Wuhan. 10 However, all these studies are based on cases identified in Wuhan. Recently, Guan and colleagues reported 1099 cases with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 from 552 hospitals across 31 provinces/provincial municipalities. 11 They reported that the median age was 47.0 years, 41.90% were females, 31.30% had been to Wuhan and 71.80% had contacted people from Wuhan, and the average incubation period was 3.0 days. The most common symptoms were fever and cough. 11 Together, several articles about cases from Wuhan have reported epidemiologic and clinical manifestations and provided important initial background upon which we seek to furnish further in this paper. [8] [9] [10] 12 The clinical features of COVID-19 of cases outside Wuhan is still largely unknown.