Since the beginning of the current pandemic, COVID-19 has infiltrated all aspects of biomedicine. As the associations between mortality risk and chronic illness became evident, the field of hematology has played a front-line role in combating this global public health emergency, with a particular focus on patients with hematologic malignancies, immunodeficiencies, and sickle cell disease (SCD). Hematologists have been key in elucidating the pathophysiology of the microthromboses that occur with infection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus while determining the most effective anticoagulation regimens, in unraveling the mechanisms of the Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, and in characterizing the development of neutralizing antibodies. 1–4 Accordingly, improving COVID-19 diagnostic testing – performance, capacity, availability, accessibility – has become a major collective goal of the biomedical community with hematologists heavily involved at the forefront of these efforts.
To achieve this goal, on April 24, 2020, Congress appropriated $1.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support SARS-CoV-2 development and expansion of testing. Within days, the NIH launched the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) Tech initiative to develop innovative technologies and speed them to market, with the goals of 1) deploying millions of COVID-19 tests per week by December 2020 and 2) enabling Americans to return safely to school and work.5 The ambitious agenda of RADx Tech, as the name indicates, includes clinical evaluation, manufacturing scale up, and widespread deployment of tests to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a medical emergency often presenting with hyperleucocytosis, coagulopathy and pulmonary infiltration necessitating emergent initiation of therapy. AML with concomitant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection presents a unique challenge given the lack of evidence‐based guidelines or historical experience. While cohort studies have shown early serological responses to SARS‐CoV‐2 in healthy adults, 1 , 2 little is known about the serological responses to infection in patients with AML and the impact of chemotherapy on this response. In the present study, we detail the clinical presentations, treatments, serological and virological responses, and outcomes of two adolescents who presented with AML and concurrent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19).