key: cord-1002535-ls11rhm9
authors: Tan, J.; Yang, C.
title: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Transmission in Patients With Cancer Still Being Described
date: 2020-05-01
journal: Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol)
DOI: 10.1016/j.clon.2020.04.013
sha: e37b8d06ad6bed7720b2ff8aaf5d58a13c0869be
doc_id: 1002535
cord_uid: ls11rhm9

nan

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Transmission in Patients With Cancer Still Being Described Madam d Yu and colleagues [1] reported a retrospective study of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission and suggested that cancer patients were twice as likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 as the general population. However, there are some aspects of this worth reinterpreting that may cause misleading conclusions.

Age is the most important confounding factor. Hospitalisation following COVID-19 infection due to more severe manifestations is more likely in older patients, as is a higher incidence of cancer. Patients with cancer included in this study were from a designated hospital for severe cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan between 30 December 2019 and 17 February 2020. During this time, the number of patients increased dramatically and there was a serious shortage of medical resources, which resulted in a greatly increased risk of nosocomial infection. It was reported that hospitalacquired transmission accounted for 41.3% of 138 hospitalised patients [2] . Therefore, it is inaccurate to conclude that the infection rate of cancer patients was higher. In addition, the number of COVID-19 cases might have been underestimated because of the lack of medical resources and also that the diagnostic criteria did not include asymptomatic infections, which may account for 25% of all infection cases [3] . By contrast, detection signal bias may exist in cancer patients, as they may pay more attention to their healthy condition and are more likely to seek medical help in the early stages of any disease, which may increase the detection rate of COVI-19 in cancer patients. Furthermore, a high infection rate in cancer patients in their study may also have been due to the location of the study. The community infection rate and mortality rate in Wuhan were significantly higher than in other cities in China.

We suggest that the authors analyse the infection rate of other hospitalised patients to further clarify the real infection risk of patients with cancer.

SARS-CoV-2 transmission in patients with cancer at a tertiary care hospital in Wuhan, China

Clinical characteristics of 138 hospitalized patients with 2019 novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia in Wuhan, China

Up to 25% of people with COVID-19 may not show symptoms

0936-6555/Ó 2020 The Royal College of Radiologists

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Transmission in Patients With Cancer Still Being Described

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. J. Tan*, C. Yangy