What is it about?
During the COVID-19 outbreak, emergency doctors had to quickly tell apart COVID-19 pneumonia from ordinary bacterial pneumonia, often while waiting for swab results. We looked at whether a routine complete blood count could help. We compared 283 patients with COVID-19 and 242 with community-acquired pneumonia, all with fever and respiratory symptoms. COVID-19 patients had lower white blood cells - neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes and eosinophils - and lower platelets. Combining these values we built the MECOR score (Model for Early COvid-19 Recognition), which identified COVID-19 with a sensitivity of about 85-88% and a specificity of about 72-73%, including in a validation group, and estimates the probability of COVID-19 for each score value.
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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The MECOR score uses a cheap, fast test available in every hospital worldwide, including low-resource settings. It could support early triage and isolation decisions for patients with pneumonia during COVID-19 outbreaks, although it needs confirmation in prospective studies and is not a substitute for virological testing.
Perspectives
In the first months of the pandemic, every hour gained in identifying COVID-19 patients mattered for infection control. I liked the pragmatic spirit of this multicentre work: using the humble blood count, a test we all order every day, in a smarter way.
Professor Stefano Di Bella
Universita degli Studi di Trieste
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Model for Early COvid-19 Recognition (MECOR) Score: A Proof-of-Concept for a Simple and Low-Cost Tool to Recognize a Possible Viral Etiology in Community-Acquired Pneumonia Patients during COVID-19 Outbreak, Diagnostics, August 2020, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics10090619.
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