Consistent with this notion we found that the OR of P-DM was not significantly different in hospitalized COVID-19 compared to influenza patients after adjusting for age and sex (OR = 1.14 [95% CI: 0.74–1.77], p = 0.61) without or with laboratory surrogates of disease severity (LDH, CRP and D-dimer) (OR = 0.90 [95% CI = 0.64,1.28], p = 0.56) (unmatched analysis). Here, CRP is linked to influenza.