Novel coronavirus pneumonia combined with viral conjunctivitis: three cases report

Abstract

Since January 2020, as ophthalmologists working at the center of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, China, we found 3 cases in 30 COVID-19 patients with binocular conjunctivitis.Of them, one case visited for conjunctivitis as a first symptom and then diagnosed as COVID-19 three days later, and two cases visited for binocular conjunctivitis during the COVID-19 onset.In 3 patients, conjunctivitis was manifested as signs of viral conjunctivitis from mild to moderate.The symptoms of two patients disappeared after treatment of antiviral eyedrops for 7 to 10 days and another patient died of COVID-19.Interestingly, although we detected positive viral nucleic acid in the conjunctiva sacs of 2 of other 27 COVID-19 patients by using swabs and RT-PCR technology, no conjunctivitis occurred in these two patients. Key words: Coronavirus; Infection; Novel coronavirus pneumonia; Conjunctivitis