Objective: In view of the difficulty of the shortage of new coronavirus nucleal acid test in the early COVID-19 outbreak, to explore the application value of chest CT in screening COVID-19 patients. Methods: Retrospective analysis was performed on the data of patients with fever who received chest CT and new coronavirus nucleal acid test during January 25, 2020 to February 2, 2020 in Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. A total of 587 patients were enrolled, including 290 males and 297 females, aged from 11.0 to 96.0 (51.3±17.1) years old. Take the nucleic acid test results as the gold standard, the sensitivity, specificity and rate of missed diagnosis of CT screening COVID-19 were calculated. Results: Among the 587 patients, there were 433 positive cases (73.8%, 433/587) and 154 negative cases (26.2%, 154/587) of novel coronavirus nucleic acid test. Using CT screening, 494 cases (84.2%, 494/587) were positive and 93 cases (15.8%, 93/587) were negative. The sensitivity of CT screening COVID-19 was 97.7% (423/433), specificity was 53.9% (83/154) and rate of missed diagnosis was 2.3% (10/433). Conclusions In the early COVID-19 outbreak, CT screening has the advantages of high sensitivity and low rate of missed diagnosis of COVID-19, which can compensate for the shortage of new coronavirus nucleal acid test and can be used as the basis for rapid screening for early prevention and control of COVID-19 outbreak.