Differential diagnosis and prospective grading of COVID-19 at the early stage with simple hematological and biochemical variables

We evaluated simple laboratory variables to discriminate COVID-19 from bacterial pneumonia or influenza and for the prospective grading of COVID-19. Multivariate logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) were used to estimate the diagnostic performance of the significant discriminating variables. A comparative analysis was performed with different severity. The leukocytosis (P = 0.017) and eosinopenia (P = 0.001) were discriminating variables between COVID-19 and bacterial pneumonia with AUC of 0.778 and 0.825. Monocytosis (P = 0.003), the decreased lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) (P
Highlights • Laboratory features help differential diagnosis and the grade of COVID-19. • Leukocytosis and eosinopenia discriminate COVID-19 from bacterial pneumonia. • Monocytosis, NLR, and LMR distinguish COVID-19 from influenza. • Age, NLR, SAA, LDH, CD3+ cells, and FDP assist the stratification of COVID-19.