Objective To understand the clinical data and pharyngeal swab test results of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in a hospital, evaluate the clinical value of pharyngeal swab nucleic acid test of SARS-CoV-2, and provide reference for clinical diagnosis of COVID-19. Methods Clinical data of patients who were confirmed with COVID-19 by nucleic acid test of SARS-CoV-2 in Xiangya Hospital of Central South University from January 23 to February 18, 2020 were collected, patients' clinical data, sampling frequency, sampling method, specimen type, and testing method for nucleic acid test were analyzed. Results The average age of 28 confirmed patients was (43.78±14.46) years, male-female ratio was 2.5:1, 46.42% of the patients had a history of living/traveling in Wuhan/Hubei, 14.29% had a history of close contact with COVID-19 patients. The main clinical manifestations of patients were fever (78.57%) and cough (53.57%), laboratory examination showed normal white blood cell count (71.43%) and decreased lymphocyte count (53.57%), pulmonary CT showed multiple ground-glass opacity (92.59%) and patchy opacity (70.37%). Among 28 confirmed cases, the median time from onset to confirmed diagnosis was 5.5 days. 18 cases (64.29%) were positive and 1 case was suspected positive for SARS-CoV-2 for the first test, 5 cases (17.86%) were negative for the first test (including suspected positive) and positive for the second test, 2 cases (7.14%) were negative for the first two test and positive for the third test; 1 case (3.57%) was positive for the fourth test; 2 cases (7.14%) was positive for the fifth test. 26 cases (92.86%) were taken specimen through nasal/oropharyngeal swabs, 2 cases (7.14%) were induced sputum excretion, 27 cases (96.43%) were confirmed by RT-PCR of nasopharyngeal swabs, pharyngeal swabs and sputum specimens, and 1 case (3.57%) was confirmed by next-generation sequencing technology (NGS). Conclusion COVID-19 is usually characterized by fever and dry cough, but there is no specificity, and confirm of diagnosis still rely on nucleic acid test of SARS-CoV-2. Pharyngeal swab is the preferred specimen collection method for nucleic acid test of SARS-CoV-2 in fever clinics, it has the advantage of being simple and easy, but negative result cannot exclude SARS-CoV-2 infection.