key: cord-0791814-u3inpiua
authors: Lovato, Andrea; Rossettini, Giacomo; de Filippis, Cosimo
title: Sore throat in COVID‐19: Comment on “Clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients with SARS‐CoV‐2 infection: A single arm meta‐analysis”
date: 2020-04-06
journal: J Med Virol
DOI: 10.1002/jmv.25815
sha: 5d39225ab63356f522c549ec8535067a1a170628
doc_id: 791814
cord_uid: u3inpiua

We read with interest the recent meta-analysis by Sun et al.1 that included 50466 patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The author found that fever and cough were the most common symptoms, and several subjects had muscle soreness or fatigue. In addition, they reported that "by reading the included literature, we found that diarrhea, hemoptysis, headache, sore throat, shock, and other symptoms are rare".1 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The author found that fever and cough were the most common symptoms, and several subjects had muscle soreness or fatigue. In addition, they reported that "by reading the included literature, we found that diarrhea, hemoptysis, headache, sore throat, shock, and other symptoms are rare." 1 Regarding sore throat, we believed that this could be a confounding affirmation. The majority of included patients (48 981 subjects) in the review 1 was extracted from studies that did not describe accurately the clinical presentation. [2] [3] [4] The largest report on 44 672 confirmed COVID-19 patients focused on critical cases and on the case-fatality rate, without a detailed presentation of the symptoms. 2 has been reported for these tests. Results from quantitative RT-PCR could be affected by the variation of viral RNA sequences or by the viral load in different anatomic sites during the disease natural history. 8 By estimate, FNR from one-time testing was high as 30% to 50% in real COVID-19 cases. 8 A recent report on 1014 COVID-19 cases found that only 59% of patients had positive SARS-CoV-2 swabs at presentation, while chest computed tomography had higher sensitivity for the diagnosis of COVID-19. 9 Consequently, the clinical presentation could be helpful in identifying suspected COVID-19 cases and we think that sore throat should not be considered a rare symptom as reported by Sun et al. 1 This could lead to undiagnosed cases and to the spread of infection. Patients with the suspected disease should be isolated (use of individual

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