The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and is now pandemic all over the world. Previous study has reported several COVID-19 cases with conjunctivitis. However, the complete profiling of COVID-19 related ocular symptoms and diseases are still missing. This study aims to investigate the ocular manifestations and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients.
To date, the epidemiologic data on the incidence of conjunctivitis in COVID-19 patients ranges from 0.82% to 4.76%.
However, the precise incidence of ocular manifestations relative to COVID-19 is unclear. The study found that 1) of a total of 534 COVID-19 patients identified, 25 patients (4.68%) presented with conjunctival congestion; 2) the incidence of dry eye (112, 20.97%), blurred vision (68, 12.73%), and foreign body sensation (63, 11.80%) ranked in the top three ocular symptoms; and 3) simultaneously, we also found that some COVID-19 patients had a history of eye diseases, among which the top five were conjunctivitis (33, 6.18%), dry eye (24, 4.49%), keratitis (14, 2.62%), cataract (9, 1.69%), and diabetic retinopathy (5, 0.94%).
