Fig. 1: Temporal IFN and inflammatory cytokine patterns of patients with COVID-19 and flu in relation to hospital admission.

a, Schematic showing the experimental design with sampling at specific time intervals after hospital admission of 32 patients with COVID-19 and 16 patients with flu with pneumonia followed longitudinally. Dashed lines indicate the time of the first and last onset of critical disease, respectively. b, Serum levels of IFN-λ1, IFN-α, IFN-γ, TNF, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-10 and CCL3 at various time intervals after hospital admission. Data are presented as scatter plots with dots showing individual patient measurements, columns median values and error bars the range. For COVID-19, n = 16, 17, 21, 15, 11 and 8 for each of the six consecutive time intervals. For flu, n = 16, 14 and 11, respectively. For healthy, n = 10. Gray shading marks the limit of quantification of the assay. P values were determined by a two-tailed Mann–Whitney U-test for nonparametric comparisons. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01 and ***P < 0.001 show significance over healthy controls. ^#P < 0.05, ^##P < 0.01 and ^###P < 0.001 show significance between COVID-19 and flu groups.