Clinical and CT features of early stage patients with COVID-19: a retrospective analysis of imported cases in Shanghai, China

Abstract

To the Editor: In December 2019, patients with novel corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China. The pathogen analysis discovered a new type of coronavirus from infected airway epithelial cells, which was named as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). At a time when Chinese people were heading home to celebrate the Spring Festival, many latent cases left Wuhan, which led to the emergence of imported COVID-19 cases across the mainland of China and into some other countries. Shanghai is one of the major cities with imported cases. COVID-19 is mainly diagnosed using real-time PCR to detect SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid. Due to the limited supply of real-time PCR kits and the emergence of false-negative nucleic acid cases, some experts have proposed the use of time-saving chest computed tomography (CT) to diagnose suspected cases rather than real-time PCR. CT features at the early stage of COVID-19 have not particularly been studied yet, which is vital to the early identification of suspected cases. The purpose of this study was to explore the early stage clinical and CT features of nucleic acid-positive COVID-19. [...]