Epidemiology, clinical characteristics of the first cases of COVID-19

COVID-19 is currently the most urgent threat to public health in the world. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the first cases of COVID-19 to make further improvements in health policies and prevention measurements in response to the outbreak of COVID-19.

We performed a search in PubMed, the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), Web of Science and the WHO database of publications on COVID-19 for peer-reviewed papers from 1 December 2019 to 9 July 2020. We analysed the demographics, epidemiological characteristics, clinical features, signs and symptoms of the disease at the onset.

We identified the first cases of COVID-19 in 16 different countries/regions from Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Of these 16 cases, 8 (50.0%) were male, with a mean of age 43.38 ± 15.19 years. All the cases had a history of travel or exposure. Twelve cases (75.0%) occurred in January, eight patients were Chinese, two patients were international students in Wuhan, one patient had a history of travelling in Wuhan, and one patient was in contact with Chinese patient. The longest hospital stay was 24 days (1 patient), and the shortest was 5 days (1 patient). The usual hospital stay was 9 days (4 patients).

Understanding the epidemiological characteristics, clinical characteristics, and diagnosis and treatment of the first patients in various countries are of great significance for the identification, prevention and control of COVID-19.