Covid-19 hospitalised patients are younger, healthier than influenza patients: Study

According to a study by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community, Covid-19 hospitalised patients were more likely male, younger, and had fewer comorbidities than hospitalised influenza patients.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. To carry out the task, OHDSI established an international network of researchers and observational health databases with a central coordinating centre at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.

This global network study examined data collected from over 34,000 Covid-19 patients across three continents.

It revealed that Covid-19 hospitalised patients were more likely males in the United States and Spain. However, in Korea, women accounted for more hospitalised cases.

The ages of patients varied in different regions, but in Spain and the US, the most common age groups were between 60 to 75.

Patients hospitalised with influenza were typically older than those hospitalised with Covid-19, and more likely to be female.

Most of these hospitalised patients had preexisting health conditions. This included the prevalence of hypertensive disorder ranged from 2 per cent to 70 per cent, diabetes from 13 per cent to 43 per cent, and asthma from 4 per cent to 15 per cent, across data sources.

hospitalised Covid-19 patients were, in general, healthier than influenza patients. While Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), cardiovascular disease, and dementia were all more common among those hospitalised with influenza compared to those hospitalised with Covid-19.

Co-lead author Edward Burn said in the research: “This study has allowed us to better understand the profiles of patients hospitalised with Covid-19.”

He added: “Despite recent discourse around the supposed poor health and limited life expectancy of Covid-19 patients, we see Covid-19 patients be in no worse health than those typically hospitalised with influenza. This further highlights the high rate of mortality among Covid-19 patients.”

Patrick Ryan, co-senior author of this study, stated: “Our community collaborated for years to develop the high-level analytics which set the course for these studies. And, our belief in both openly sharing patient data allowed us to generate this reliable, reproducible Covid patient data that will assist in important decision-making as we fight this disease.”