Paucity of cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19 among inpatients at a referral hospital in India

BACKGROUND: Varied cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19 have been described, but most studies are based on photographic or application-based observations, without a direct observed-based evaluation by dermatologists. OBJECTIVE: To study the types of cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19 among confirmed inpatients admitted to COVID-19 wards and intensive care units (ICUs). METHODS: This cross-sectional analysis was conducted at a referral hospital in Delhi, India. Four hundred forty consecutive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)–confirmed cases diagnosed with moderate or severe COVID-19 and admitted to COVID-19 wards or ICUs, respectively, were included. A cutaneous finding was considered to be associated with COVID-19 if it had been described earlier as a consequence of COVID-19 and was observed at the time of or within the first 48 hours of admission (after excluding drugs and comorbidities as causes). RESULTS: Two hundred seventy patients with moderate COVID-19 were admitted to COVID-19 wards, whereas 170 with severe disease were admitted to ICUs. Only 7 of the 270 ward patients (2.59%) and 3 of the 170 ICU patients (1.76%) had cutaneous findings associated with COVID-19. CONCLUSION: Cutaneous findings attributable to COVID-19 are infrequent, and we believe that these might have been overestimated or overemphasized in earlier studies. Although coagulopathic findings may be associated with severe COVID-19, causation cannot be established in this cross-sectional study.