Case report

A 59-year-old female had had fever for 4 days, after catching a cold. One day before visiting the hospital, she had fever and cough, but no chest tightness, chest pain, chills, nausea and vomiting or diarrhea. She did not feel better after receiving antifebrile agents. Then, she was admitted to our outpatient clinic in BHT Clinic Tema Hospital. Four days before, the patient had had contact with her relative who had traveled from Europe. In her previous medical history, bariatric surgery had been performed 3 years before and she had still type II diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension as pre-existing conditions. She was hospitalized in our hospital on March/20/2020, and still had fever after admission, with the highest temperature of 39.5 °C, heart rate of 119 beats per minute; the electrocardiography was consistent with sinus tachycardia and QTc was calculated at 0.398 seconds, blood pressure at 94/60 mmHg, and conspicuous tachypnea with a respiratory rate of 24/min with sufficient oxygenation (95% ambient air saturation). The identification of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in RT-PCR was positive from a throat swab. The risk of simultaneous contamination with other respiratory viruses and other pathogens were negative for the throat swab. The CT characteristics of the patient were similar to the case series reported by Pan et al. (). Laboratory results showed leukopenia, with 4.1×10/L, lymphopenia with 0.8×10/L, an only slightly increased CRP level, with 18.4 mg/L and a low procalcitonin level, with 0.01 ng/mL. The patient underwent a TTE examination with a 3.5-MHz transducer (Vivid-7 GE Medical System, Horten, Norway). Examinations and measurements were performed according to the recommendations of the American Echocardiography Unit. Simpson’s method was used to calculate LVEF. At the admission, LVEF was calculated at 65%, with normal TTE findings.

[…]