Abstract: Objective To study the clinical TCM features and tongue manifestations of suspected cases of novel coronavirus infection in Lingnan children.  Methods The data of 43 suspected cases of novel coronavirus infection in children from Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center were collected, and the clinical features, tongue manifestations and the relationship between tongue manifestations and the symptoms were analyzed. Results The main clinical features of the children were fever, cough, runny nose and poor appetite. The majority of fever was Zhuang fever (48.8%), and the majority of cough was with phlegm (60.5%). Most of the suspected cases were with red tongue (76.7%), and white greasy tongue coating was most common(53.5%), followed by thin white tongue coating (44.2%). There is only one case with thin yellow coating (2.3%). The total number of white blood cells and lymphocytes was in the normal range in 88.4% and 65.1% of the children, respectively, but 32.6% of the children had different degrees of lymphopenia. The chest X-ray examination results showed that the bilateral lung texture was thickened and blurred in 63.6% of the children, and only 27.3% of the children had pulmonary infection. There were 8 cases(about 18.6%) with positive results of novel coronavirus nucleic acid detection. The results of correlation analysis between symptoms and tongue manifestations showed that there was a strong correlation in the following pairs: red tongue-cough, fever-red tongue, red tongue-cough and fever, red tongue-white greasy tongue coating, cough-white greasy tongue coating, and feverwhite greasy tongue coating.Conclusion The clinical features of the suspected cases are basically the same with the confirmed cases. According to the tongue manifestations and symptoms, they are in line with the seasonal pathogenetic characteristics of children in Lingnan area. The main syndrome types are damp syndrome and heat syndrome, and there is a small part of cold syndrome.

Key words: Novel coronavirus, Suspected cases, Clinical features, Tongue manifestations, Children