Higher co-infection rates in COVID19

Several Stanford Medicine Data Scientists are working on various aspects of COVID19. Below is one trend regarding co-infection rates that might be of help to healthcare professionals. Credit to Dr. Ian Brown for noticing.

We performed 562 SARS-COV-2 tests in our ED up to March 17th 2020. Of these 562 patients, 181 were also tested for Flu A/B/RSV and 336 tested with RESPCR2 panel.

Of the 562 patients, 127 (22.6%) were positive for other viruses. (24.5% if we use 181+336 = 517 as denominator).

Of the 49 positive SARS-COV-2 results, 11 (22.4%) also had a co-infection. Of the 127 positive for other viruses, 11 (8.66%) had a SARS-COV-2 co-infection. These co-infection rate are much higher than previously reported rates.

We are sharing this at the request of the California Department of Public Health.