A call for caution in extrapolating chest CT sensitivity for COVID-19 derived from hospital data to patients among general population

摘要

I congratulate Ai for their efforts in analysing a large cohort of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients ( ). Their results and insights will be helpful for the future in case similar scenario would occur again. However, we need also to re-emphasise the background where and when their data were collected. Their patient data were based in a tertiary hospital in Wuhan and during the period of Jan 6, 2020 to Feb 6, 2020. During this period in Wuhan the attention was mainly paid to the patients with more severe symptoms. While the clinical severity of the patients was not provided in Ai ’s paper, it is highly probable that a large proportion of their patients had moderate to severe grades severity.