1680P SARS-CoV-2 infections in outpatients with cancer: Most infected patients are asymptomatic carriers without impact on chemotherapy

Background: It is still unclear whether oncological patients harbor a higher risk for an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 and for developing severe forms of COVID-19 Furthermore, it is unclear whether an infection affects essential therapy treatment and if a therapy increases the risk for an infection Methods: We tested every patient (n=1286) in 7 different oncology outpatient clinics from 04/15/2020 and 04/26/2020 for COVID-19 infection regardless of whether symptoms were present or not Virus RNA was extracted using the MGIEasy extraction kit in combination with SP-960 robots and a RT qPCR was performed Results: From 1286 tested patients 40 (3 1%) patients were identified positive Only two of those (5 0%) had mild symptoms whereas one positive patient (2,5%) was treated stationary with pneumonia The majority (37/40) was asymptomatic virus-carriers (92,5 %) Noteworthy is the fact that 22 (55%) of the positively tested patients were undergoing systemic therapy of which 10 (45 5%) patients received chemotherapy and 4 (18 2%) patients received immunomodulating antibodies Conclusions: A consequent testing for COVID-19 in cancer patients is obligate to identify asymptomatric positive carrier to separate this potential vector group from COVID negative patients since the majority (37/40) of positive patients was asymptomatic virus-carriers (92,5 %) The data we collected contrasts strongly the hypothesis that cancer patients are suspected to be highly vulnerable for SARS-CoV-2 infections Only a minority (3/40) of positively tested tumor patients showed symptoms An asymptomatic COVID-19 infection seems to have no impact on the further course of a chemotherapy Legal entity responsible for the study: The authors Funding: Has not received any funding Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest