Dear Editor, The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) has caused a pandemic globally. 1 As of 18 April, it had infected over 2 million people worldwide. Recently, a study reported that the median duration of SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA shedding in 113 patients was 17 days from symptom onset in Zhejiang and Shenzhen centers. 2 In Wuhan, where the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) first started, the duration of the infection and clinical characteristics of the patients remain unknown. Herein, we studied the clinical characteristics of 36 confirmed COVID‐19 patients who continued to shed viral RNA for longer than 30 days.

The 378 patients diagnosed with COVID‐19 based on the New Coronavirus Pneumonia Prevention and Control Program (5th edition) published by the National Health Commission of China, 3 were admitted to the 4th Infectious Disease Department in Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital from 11 February to 11 April 2020. We searched their electronic medical records and found that their duration of SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA shedding was longer than 30 days. The 36 patients were tested for SARS‐CoV‐2 using the real‐time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) test, on samples collected from the respiratory tract using the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended Kit (BioGerm, Shanghai, China), and following World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for qRT‐PCR. 4