Introduction
The recent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
outbreak is the third novel CoV within the last 17 years. Most patients
present with mild symptoms such as fever, cough, expectoration,
headache, myalgia or fatigue, or dyspnea(1, 2). Some patients report
gastrointestinal manifestations that precede respiratory illness and
fever by 1-2 days. However, other patients may develop lethal
complications such as pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome
(ARDS), RNAaemia, and multi-organ failure. It is apparent that
SARS-CoV-2 is now much more hazardous than expected compared to previous
outbreaks such as the H1N1 pandemic which caused 12,429 deaths over a
year while SARS-CoV-2 caused more than 13,000 over 5 weeks in the
USA(3). Moreover, the influenza pandemic which infected one third of
world’s population and resulted in 50 million deaths in 1918 had a basic
reproductive number (BRN) of 1.8 only while SARS-CoV-2 has an estimated
BRN (R0) of >2-3(4, 5).
Unlike other viral infections such as SARS, SARS-CoV-2 is highly
contagious with a relatively long asymptomatic period. Moreover, there
is evidence of pre-symptomatic transmission of the virus(6). Given the
similarity in viral load between symptomatic and asymptomatic
patients(7), controlling SARS-CoV-2 transmission is highly challenging.
This retrospective analysis reports the epidemiologic features, clinical
characters, radiological and laboratory findings, and outcomes of 19
patients with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Germany.