Rapid screening of COVID‐19 patients using white blood cell scattergrams, a study on 381 patients
Jennifer Osman, Jérôme Lambert, Marie Templé, Floriane Devaux, Rémy Favre, Claire Flaujac, Delphine Bridoux, Stéphanie Marque‐Juillet, Fabrice Bruneel, François Mignon, Ernesto Díaz-Flores, Véronique Hentgen, A. Greder-Belan, R. Azarian, Mehrsa Koukabi, Philippe Rousselot, Victoria Raggueneau, Benjamin Manéglier
Abstract
Complementary tools are warranted to increase the sensitivity of the initial testing for COVID-19. We identified a specific 'sandglass' aspect on the white blood cell scattergram of COVID-19 patients reflecting the presence of circulating plasmacytoid lymphocytes. Patients were dichotomized as COVID-19-positive or -negative based on reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and chest computed tomography (CT) scan results. Sensitivity and specificity of the 'sandglass' aspect were 85·9% and 83·5% respectively. The positive predictive value was 94·3%. Our findings provide a non-invasive and simple tool to quickly categorize symptomatic patients as either COVID-19-probable or -improbable especially when RT-PCR and/or chest CT are not rapidly available.