Introduction
The novel coronavirus infection COVID-19 led to an outbreak at the end of December 2019 in the Chinese city Wuhan, which quickly spread around the world. In March 2020, the World Health Organization announced a pandemic of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and pneumonia it causes, COVID-19. Currently, 40,567,780 cases of coronavirus infection and more than 1,123,127 deaths have been registered in the world (1). In Kazakhstan, the first case of coronavirus infection was registered in March 2020; for October 2020, 109 623 cases of infection, 1768 deaths were registered (2).
Cohorts of older people and people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of contracting coronavirus infection (3). Patients with hematological diseases, especially malignant neoplasms, are more susceptible to infection than the general population due to the systemic immunosuppression administered as part of the treatment of the underlying disease. Therapy is accompanied by neutropenia, lymphopenia, and disorders of the mechanisms of innate and adaptive immunity, as well as the influence of chemotherapy and other methods of treatment. Consequently, patients with hematologic malignancies may be at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 and have a worse prognosis. These patients can also spread the virus for a longer time due to the increased viral load and delayed elimination of the virus (4).
In world practice, enough experience has not yet been accumulated in the treatment of hemoblastosis in the context of COVID-19, recommendations in this direction are based on the opinion and experience of experts and are constantly updated (5).