Differences between COVID-19 and suspected then confirmed SARS-CoV-2-negative pneumonia: A retrospective study from a single center

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan, Hubei, China in December 2019. Tens thousands of people have been infected with the disease. Our aim was to distinguish severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-positive patients from SARS-CoV-2-negative patients. We retrospectively compared the data of COVID-19 patients with those of suspected and confirmed SARS-CoV-2-negative patients (control patients). There were 78 COVID-19 patients and 26 control patients, whose median ages were significantly different (P =.001). The percentage of COVID-19 patients admitting exposure to Wuhan was obviously higher than that of control patients (X2 = 29.130; P