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Background Gastrointestinal and sensory manifestations (GSMs) of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) may affect food intake, resulting in malnutrition and poor outcomes. We characterized the impact of GSMs and oral nutrition supplementation on energy‐protein intake (EPI) and hospital discharge in adult patients with COVID‐19. Methods Patients from two hospitals were enrolled (n = 357). We recorded the presence and type of GSM at admission, estimated energy requirements (EER) and the EPI based on regular food intake (plate diagram sheets) during hospital stays. Patients not achieving 60% of their EER from food over 2 consecutive days received oral nutrition supplementation (ONS) with a high‐energy‐protein oral drink. Results Most patients (63.6%) presented with GSMs at admission. Anorexia was the most common manifestation (44%). Patients with anorexia or more than one GSMs were more likely to not achieve 60% EER on the first day of follow‐up and to require the ONS intervention (P ≤ 0.050). Prevalence of at least one GSM was higher in patients who did not achieve hospital discharge than in patients who achieved it (74.2% vs 54.6%, P = 0.038). The patients requiring ONS (26.9%) demonstrated good adherence to the intervention (79.3%), achieved their EER during 95.7% of the supplementation time, and presented with hospital discharge rates similar to patients not requiring ONS (92.2% vs 91.9%, respectively; P = 1.000). Conclusions GSM were prevalent in COVID‐19 and it impaired EER attendance and patient recovery. ONS was well‐tolerated, aided EER attendance, and potentially facilitated hospital discharge.

In this paper we study combining designs concatenating levels from a full factorial for some factors with screening alternatives for the others. This was done to deal with a practical situation in plant nutrition experiments. The original problem was a study design for 14 potential factors in banana tree nutrition, and researchers imagined four full factorials were needed to test their hypothesis, being two from the 33 and two of the 34 series. As this would demand at least 216 experimental units and facing limited resources we seek for a different planning strategy. The idea was to combine in the same experiment four  instances of DSD (Denitive Screening Designs) for 10 three-level factors, each in a different block, with a fraction of the full factorial of the 34 series. A central point treatment, with average level for all factors, was present in all blocks. Interchange algorithms were used to concatenate the factor levels. Resulting optimized design was compared to the designs sampled following the same principle. Design comparison criterion was the expected average variance of the estimates for factors (Ar optimality). Optimization  reduced 4.02% of the average values of the criterion in a reference population of sampled designs. It was possible to show that the variance for linear and quadratic effects in the full factorial were higher than in the optimized plan. As an example, the analysis of an actual eld trial is presented. Authors recommend the use of fractional factorial strategy including DSD designs in agronomic trials, specially in the screening phase.