Clinical Features and Outcomes of 252 Asymptomatic and Mildly Symptomatic Patients with COVID-19 in a Temporary Cabin Hospital in Wuhan, China

Abstract

Background: 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been characterized as a pandemic by WHO. Clinical and virological course of patients with severe disease status have been reported, but the data are little about non-severe patients.

Methods: In this retrospective single center study, we include 252 inpatients with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 treated in one temporary cabin hospital of Wuhan, China. Demographic, clinical, serial chest CT outcome and serial viral test data were compared between asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic patients after extracted from electronic medical records. Pearson Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test, were used to test the association between the categorical variables of clinical features and the symptomatic status or patient referral status. One-way ANOVA was used to test the associations between the continuous variables of clinical features and the symptomatic status.

Findings: Among all the 252 patients, 74 (29 . 4%) of them were asymptomatic, and 221 of them (87 . 7%) were test negative twice in a row within an average of 7 . 9 days (range, 3-39 days). Asymptomatic patients were more likely to achieve negative test result within 5 days compared to symptomatic patients (17 . 81% versus 5 . 65%, P=0 . 003). Asymptomatic patients and symptomatic patients were equally likely to reach virus clear status during their stay in the cabin hospital (93 . 15% versus 86 . 44%, P=0 . 13). The initial chest CT screening showed that 81 (32 . 1%) patients had no pneumonia lesion, 52 (20 . 6%) patients had unilateral pneumonia while 119 (47 . 2%) patients had bilateral pneumonia. Symptomatic patients had higher chance to have bilateral pneumonia (P<0 . 0001) and less likely to show improvement on pneumonia during the follow-up CT scan (P=0 . 0002). Totally 69 (27 . 4%) patients were referred to the designated hospital. 36 (14 . 3%) patients were referred due to cabin hospital closing, Only 23 (9 . 1%) patients were referred due to pneumonia progression.

Interpretation: The temporary cabin hospital provided a good place to cure and quarantine non-severe patients. It greatly relieved the strain of regular hospital and played an important role to eliminate the community transmission and family-clustered transmission.

Funding Statement: The National Nature Science Foundation of China (No.31770180); the State Key Lab of Virology, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Research Fund (No. 2020IOV006); Hubei Provincial Health committee joint project WJ2019H293 and WJ2019H295; the Young and Middle-aged Medical Professionals in WuHan (H. Gao); Hubei Maternal and Child Health Hospital Project 220933016, 220939015, 220940016, 220911013, and 220940013.

Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethical Committee of the Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Hubei Province. Written informed consent was obtained from each enrolled patient.