Clinical Study of 45 Cases of COVID-19 and a Consideration of Severity Classification by the Kanagawa Model

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus infection in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, in December 2019, has spread rapidly around the world, and the number of cases with no apparent route of transmission (cases of community transmission) is increasing in Japan We have encountered 45 cases of COVID-19 infection, including 33 male and 12 female patients The average age of the patients was 50 6 years The symptoms were fever in 39 (86 7%) cases, cough in 33 (73 3%) cases, malaise in 24 (53 3%) cases, and diarrhea in 5 (11 1%) cases In addition, according to the Kanagawa-model severity classification constructed by Kanagawa Prefecture to avoid collapse of the medical infrastructure caused by a sudden increase in patients, 30 cases were classified as having mild disease, 14 as having moderately severe disease, and 1 as having severe disease Of the 30 patients with mild disease, 1 (3 3%) showed deterioration to moderately severe disease during the clinical course, and of the 14 patients with moderately severe disease, 6 (42 9%) showed deterioration to severe disease The findings in respect of the subsequent clinical course of the patients suggest that the Kanagawa-model severity classification is a reasonable classification for satisfactory triage of patients