Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

March 6, 2020

Caution: The clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients at admission are changing

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  • A new study out of China compared symptoms at admission during early and late periods of the current COVID-19 outbreak. The authors report differences in symptom (e.g., systemic symptoms, such as fever, were more common in the early group but more severe in the later), suggesting that viral mutation may be responsible for changing symptom profiles. 
  • However, tremendous caution should be used in interpreting these results as the authors were not able to account for changes in diagnostic procedures, care seeking patterns, or other external factors that may explain these results. 

Chen et al. (Mar 6, 2020). Caution: The clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients at admission are changing. Pre-print downloaded Mar 6 from https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.03.20030833