Poor outcome and prolonged persistence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in COVID-19 patients with haematological malignancies; King's College Hospital experience

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged at the end of 2019 and caused an infection named COVID-19 (Guan, Ni et al. 2020). Patients with compromised immune systems are at increased risk of complications but this risk is not precisely defined (Liang, Guan et al. 2020). Although age, gender, comorbidities and ethnicity are risk factors for adverse outcomes (Huang, Wang et al. 2020), various pre-existing conditions, including haematological cancers, have also been reported to correlate with poor outcomes (Aries, Davies et al. 2020, He, Chen et al. 2020, Malard, Genthon et al. 2020, Martin-Moro, Marquet et al. 2020, medRxiv 2020).