Clinical time course of COVID-19, its neurological manifestation and some thoughts on its management

• Main Authors: Wei Li, David Wang, Yanan Li, Bo Hu, Huijuan Jin, Candong Hong, Shengcai Chen, Yifan Zhou, Ling Mao, Quanwei He, Jiang Chang, Mengdie Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMJ Publishing Group 2020-06-01
• Series: Stroke and Vascular Neurology
• Online Access: https://svn.bmj.com/content/5/2/177.full

Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID‐19) has become a global pandemic. COVID-19 runs its course in two phases, the initial incubation phase and later clinical symptomatic phase. Patients in the initial incubation phase often have insidious clinical symptoms, but they are still highly contagious. At the later clinical symptomatic phase, the immune system is fully activated and the disease may enter the severe infection stage in this phase. Although many patients are known for their respiratory symptoms, they had neurological symptoms in their first 1–2 days of clinical symptomatic phase, and ischaemic stroke occurred 2 weeks after the onset of the clinical symptomatic phase. The key is to prevent a patient from progressing to this severe infection from mild infection. We are sharing our experience on prevention and management of COVID-19.