High COVID-19 viral load in hospital patients tied to higher risk for deathHigh SARS-CoV-2 viral load at hospital admission may place patients with and without cancer at higher risk for death, a new multicenter observational study published in Cancer Cell suggests.Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine used surrogate markers to measure the viral load of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, in 100 cancer patients and 2,914 patients without cancer admitted to one of three New York City hospitals from Mar 15 to May 14.The in-hospital death rate was 38.8% in all patients with a high viral load, 24.1% among those with a medium viral load, and 15.3% among those with a low viral load (P < 0.001).Similarly, cancer patients with a high viral load had