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What are the warning signs? What predicts that
these people are going to get severe disease?
These are people who have shortness of breath on exertion, SpO2 that is low,
persistent or new onset of fever. These are the clinical features that tell us that this
person is going to deteriorate.
Laboratory markers that indicate deterioration/warning sign will be:
i) increasing C-reactive protein (CRP)/raised CRP. We don't have solid data for it
but our impression is CRP value more than 70-100 seems to be a warning sign,
ii) increasing ferritin/ raised ferritin to more than 500
iii) persistently low or dropping lymphocyte count <1.0, again is a warning sign.
They might get severe COVID-19.
Radiological criteria will be a multi-lobular involvement or rapidly worsening chest
x-rays. These are the features we look for. In all the cases, we look for risk factors, the
duration of disease, how long they've been sick and the warning signs.