Prevalence and clinical features of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Fever Clinic of a teaching hospital in Beijing: a single-center, retrospective study

Ying Liang; Jingjin Liang; Qingtao Zhou; Xiaoguang Li; Fei Lin; Zhonghua Deng; Biying Zhang; Lu Li; Xiaohua Wang; Hong Zhu; Qingbian Ma; Xiaomei Tong; Jie Xu; Yongchang Sun

Since the outbreak in Wuhan, as a quick response, Fever Clinics were requested to reinforce case finding of pneumonia of unknown etiologies. Fever Clinics, mostly affiliated to the Division of Infectious Diseases in general hospitals, had been established after SARS outbreak in 2003, and since then served as the first line to monitor and manage acute febrile respiratory infections, mostly seasonal influenza in recent years. For 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), this time, patients with body temperatures≥37.2 o C were asked to firstly visit Fever Clinics, where a triage strategy was implemented 9 , and probable or possible cases were identified by experts or expert panels, and samples were sent for quick viral detection. On Jan. 21, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was identified in our Fever Clinic, and up to Feb. 15, 21 cases were diagnosed, with 19 cases confirmed by positive 2019-nCoV results, among 88 patients with pneumonia sent for viral detection. As far as we know, the prevalence of COVID-19 in patients with pneumonia visiting Fever Clinics has not been reported, and there is lack of data comparing the clinical features between COVID-19 and pneumonia of other etiologies.