Since being identified in China in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 has rapidly evolved into a global pandemic with over 4 million cases and more than 270,000 deaths.(1) Following the first reported cases in the United Kingdom (UK) in late January 2020, numbers have continued to rise with 223,060 cases and 32,065 deaths reported as of 11 th May 2020.(2) Initial reports from China have indicated that Covid-19 has an overall mortality rate of 1.4%. However, the prognosis varies widely between groups, with age over 60 years and underlying conditions including hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer identified as risk factors for severe disease and death.(3) The initial reports from China show that patients with cancer are over-represented among individuals who develop severe Covid-19 after contracting the virus.(4) Patients with haematological malignancies are expected to be at increased risk of adverse outcomes from this viral infection, due being immunosuppressed as a consequence of the underlying cancer, and from the effects of therapy. This has led to a variety of recommendations to reduce the risk from Covid-19, including "shielding" by self-isolating at home for prolonged periods, and alterations to therapy such as delaying or even omitting chemotherapy, radiotherapy or transplantation.(5-8) However, at the time of writing there is virtually no published data on the impact of Covid-19 in patients with haematological malignancies.

The presence of fever in malignancy usually indicates infection, though transfusion, thrombosis and drugs are also culprits. However, particularly in some tumour types, fever can also be a paraneoplastic syndrome, caused by the malignancy itself. This can be a diffi cult diagnosis to establish and presents a therapeutic challenge to the physician when the underlying malignancy is not easily treated.

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