The first patients hospitalised for infection with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) had viral pneumonia, with most initial symptoms being fever, dry cough and malaise, according to one of the first publications on the outbreak.

Another early report notes that some infected people in the community may be asymptomatic but shedding virus, while others are described as “cryptic cases of walking pneumonia”.

A major report in the Lancet, by Chinese respiratory and critical care doctors treating the first 41 patients at a specially designated Wuhan hospital, reveals that most (73%) were men, the mean age was 49, and only 32% had comorbidities such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension or CVD.

The report does not mention any immunocompromised patients among the cohort, all of whom had been admitted to the hospital before or on 2 January.