The characteristics of novel coronavirus pneumonia are dry cough, fever, and malaise, but the presence of sputum does not necessarily rule out novel coronavirus pneumonia. Many patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia are now found to be middle-aged or elderly, and a significant number of these middle-aged or elderly patients have chronic underlying lung disease, such as chronic bronchitis combined with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which can cause coughing and sputum symptoms in winter and spring. Once these patients are combined with novel coronavirus pneumonia, of course, they can have fever and coughing symptoms. Therefore, the presence or absence of sputum is not the only way to distinguish between patients with and without sputum. The best way to confirm the diagnosis is to have nucleic acid testing, but it is not possible to have nucleic acid testing for everyone in the hospital, so the best way is to exclude epidemiological contact history, that is, whether they have been to Wuhan or Hubei recently, or whether they have been in contact with people from Hubei or Wuhan for 2 weeks. So the prerequisite to determine whether a patient is a novel coronavirus is not the presence or absence of sputum, but the epidemiological contact history, from clinical symptoms, nucleic acid testing to make the relevant diagnosis. Content source: Dr. Yurai