Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 pneumonia in Zhejiang province, China: a description of early stage

Background: The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus since December, 2019, has now causing nearly 75 thousand confirmed cases in China (until paper preparing). This epidemic has posed significant threats to international health and the economy. Zhejiang province, which once had the 2nd most accumulative cases among all provinces, has now dropped to top No.5 (until paper preparing). It had a high discharge rates (43.86%) from hospital and the lowest death rate among all top 5 epidemic provinces, this drew our attention to the epidemiological, clinical characteristics and local government engagement of this region.MethodsIn this study, we included all confirmed cases of COVID-19 pneumonia in Zhejiang province from Jan 21 to Feb 11, 2020. All data come from cases issued by Zhejiang provincial health commission.ResultsUntil Feb 11, 2020, 1143 cases were confirmed in Zhejiang province. We analysed the cases growth information in Zhejiang province and age, gender, severe cases percent, the source of the patients, the time of disease onset to confirm and the clinical symptoms of the patients. We also compared the clinical symptoms of elders and the young.ConclusionsThe patients in Zhejiang province had no age and gender preference, and the average time of disease onset to confirm was 5.9 days. The clinical symptoms were mainly fever, cough and weakness, similarly with before reported. The difference between elders and younger are not significant. Until paper preparing, Zhejiang province has very high discharge rate and low death rate, low cases increase rate in China.