1  Introduction
Starting in December 2019, cases of pneumonia with unknown causes began to appear in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. Subsequently, the outbreak of this pneumonia quickly spread throughout the Hubei province, country, and world. This pneumonia was confirmed to result from a novel coronavirus infection according to whole-genome sequencing [1]. On January 13, 2020, the World Health Organization tentatively named the virus as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-ncov). On February 7, 2020, China officially named this novel coronavirus pneumonia as NCP. Later, on February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially renamed the NCP as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) [2]. COVID-19 is mainly characterized by pulmonary inflammation, which can cause damage to the gastrointestinal tract, liver, and nervous system [3], [4]. It can also cause fever, cough, and other symptoms [5], [6]. The clinical manifestations are similar to those of other viral infections, and thus differential diagnosis from other viral infections is necessary.
The clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 mainly relies on laboratory virus nucleic acid detection but is affected by virus levels in patients and sample collection methods. False-negative results are frequently observed. Additionally, numerous studies have reported changes in the laboratory detection data of patients with COVID-19 [7], [8] and studies typically focus on one or several hematology indices, limiting the applicability of the research results. Therefore, we comprehensively analyzed and compared the laboratory data of screened patients with COVID-19 to provide a basis for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of this disease compared to influenza.