COVID-19 is a novel emerging respiratory infectious disease. At present, much remains unknown about the mechanism of its occurrence, development and evolution process. Although the gold standard for clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 remains the nucleic acid test for SARS-CoV-2, chest CT scans have been widely used in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 as simple and fast diagnostic methods. The latter can be proved crucial when faced with a large volume of symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, which provides a sensitive diagnostic tool. The imaging manifestations of COVID-19 have some specific characteristics. A better understanding of the imaging findings is of great value for detecting lesions, evaluating lesion severity, diagnosis and differential diagnosis, assessment of therapeutic options and prognosis for COVID-19 patients.