Reply to “A SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR and Chest CT, two complementary approaches for COVID-19 diagnosis”

Excerpt

Our study was conducted from January 10th to February 8th, 2020 when China was in severe outbreak. At that time, either doctors or scientists knew little about COVID-19, testing capacity was limited and false-negative results existed. That is why we mentioned “we suggested CT and epidemiological history as the primary clues and clinical symptoms and routine laboratory tests as the secondary clues for the early clinical diagnosis of suspicious patients to implement isolation and then wait for the nucleic acid results” [1]. A basic premise was that CT results could be known within 1 h; however, RT-PCR results were reported after 12–48 h at that time. Because we need to send the sample to CDC and do the experiments. CT results could be a faster measure to identify suspected cases. …