Only 67% of those diagnosed in China with Covid-19 presented cough and only 43% had a fever when they went to the emergency department, according to a clinical study carried out among more than a thousand patients between Dec 2019 and Jan 2020 in 552 hospitals in 30 provinces and autonomous regions of China, just at the highest peak of the epidemic born in Wuhan, and published in the specialized magazine The New England Journal of Medicine.
According to the study carried out, less than 50% of those infected had a fever at the time of going to the emergency room.
An article published in The New England Journal of Medicine on a clinical study on the coronavirus -the most complete to date- has provided scientific light on the disease, explaining with figures what symptoms have been presented by people who have attended the emergency department and, after Undergoing the tests, they have been diagnosed with Covid-19 disease.
This unique study is based on statistics of actual cases seen in China’s hospitals when the coronavirus entered its maximum contagion phase.
The study, signed by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group for Covid-19, was carried out precisely between Dec 11, 2019, and Jan 29, 2020, on 1,099 patients who tested positive for coronavirus in the laboratory, from 552 hospitals in 30 provinces. , autonomous regions, and municipalities of China.
The average number of patients diagnosed with coronavirus was 47 years, of which 41.9% were women. Furthermore, according to this same study, of those who did not reside in Wuhan, 72.3% had had contact with people living in the capital of Hubei province, and 31.3% had visited the city in the previous days. .
1. Only 67.8% of patients with coronavirus had a cough.
The most common symptoms of coronavirus or Covid-19 were: fever (only 43.8% presented it at the time of admission, and 88.7% did so in the hospitalization phase) and cough, something that 67, 8% of those who went to the emergency department. Nausea and diarrhea were not common symptoms, because only they had 5% and 3.8% respectively of these patients.
On admission, the test performed was a chest computed tomography (CAT), where vitreous opacities were observed in 56.4% of cases. No abnormality was found in 17.9% of cases. However, a fairly common occurrence in patients who were subsequently diagnosed with coronavirus was lymphocytopenia (an abnormally low number in the blood of lymphocytes), present in 83.2% of patients.
Of all, 6.1% were admitted, and of these, 5% required to remain in the intensive care unit. Finally, according to the data analyzed in this same study, 2.3% had to undergo artificial respiration, and the mortality rate was 1.4%.
2. The most frequent mild symptoms
From the Ministry of Health, they point out that in most cases, the symptoms that appear are mild and that “the most common include fever, cough, and feeling of shortness of breath.” The more severe cases, the infection can cause pneumonia, harsh difficulty breathing, kidney failure, and even death.
However, from the same ministry, they have explained that “the most serious cases generally occur in elderly people or those who suffer from a chronic disease, such as heart, lung or immunity problems.”
