SARS-CoV-2 Found in Blood Test on Hospital Admission Can Predict Severe COVID-19

Researchers have found that a blood test on hospital admission showing the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 can identify patients at a high risk of severe COVID-19 and admitted patients without the novel coronavirus in their blood have a good chance of rapid recovery.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) and Danderyd Hospital (Danderyd, Sweden) who took blood samples from patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection within three days of admission found that patients with measurable levels of SARS-CoV-2 in their blood were seven times more likely to develop critical symptoms and eight times more likely to die within 28 days.


The researchers analyzed the presence of viral RNA in the blood using a standard hospital technique called PCR on samples taken from a total of 167 patients. Out of them, 61 patients had measurable levels of the virus in their blood and 15/61 (25%) died within 28 days of blood sampling. This can be compared with three deaths (3%) amongst the 106 patients who did not have measurable levels of virus in their blood. The presence of virus in the blood increased with age and was much more common in patients over the age of 60 years.

“This readily available test allows us to identify patient groups at high or low risk of severe COVID-19, which enables us to better guide the treatment and monitoring of these patients”, said the study’s lead author Karl Hagman, infectious diseases consultant at Danderyd Hospital and doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Sciences at the same hospital.

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Karolinska Institutet
Danderyd Hospital