The proportion of ICU patients in the SPP was 20%, ranging from 18% in 2016 to 22% in 2019. This was the same scale as described in two case series from Wuhan in the province of Hubei [5,6]. However, the case series from provinces outside of Hubei reported only 11%, 10% and 2% (one case) of ICU patients among COVID-19 cases, which is remarkably lower [9,11,12]. This may be attributed to the preliminary character of the outcome, as more than half of the cases were still hospitalised in these case series (Table and Figure 1).