Risk of COVID-19 for cancer patients

We read the excellent Comment by Wenhua Liang and colleagues1 in The Lancet Oncology with great interest. Of 1590 cases with confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), 18 patients had a history of cancer. The authors concluded that patients with cancer had a higher risk of COVID-19 and with a poorer prognosis than those without cancer. First, the data in the Comment by Liang and colleagues1 showed a higher percentage of patients with cancer in the COVID-19 cohort than in the overall population. However, this observation is not sufficient to conclude that patients with cancer had a higher risk of COVID-19. The incidence of COVID-19 in patients with cancer would be more informative in assessing whether or not patients with cancer have an increased risk of COVID-19. Second, we reviewed the cancer history of the 18 individuals discussed in Liang and colleaguesu0027 Comment.1 We are concerned that such a small sample size with a large amount of heterogeneity, presenting as various cancer types with different biological behaviours, highly variable disease courses (from 0–16 years), and diverse treatment strategies, might be filled with contingency and thus not ideally representative of the whole population with cancer. Notably, half of the patients with cancer had a disease course of more than 4 years, indicating that a substantial proportion of these patients might be clinically cured.