An important concern in the COVID-19 pandemic is providing optimum individual patient care, while at the same time preventing the collapse of the healthcare system. A particular feature of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is that there is often a drastic deterioration in the patient’s condition seven to 10 days into the illness. In order to allow for this phase, even patients with comparatively mild symptoms are kept in hospital for an extended period before they are discharged. As well as increasing the infection risk for staff, the treatment of such COVID-19 patients takes up valuable resources that are urgently needed for other hospitalized patients. “Although our knowledge about the virus is increasing daily, we do not yet have reliable decision-making aids to support earlier discharge,” points out Alice Assinger from MedUni Vienna’s Institute of Vascular Biology and Thrombosis Research.