Characteristics of hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection during successive waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in a reference hospital in Spain

  1. Simona Iftimie
  2. Ana F. López-Azcona
  3. Maria José Lozano-Olmo
  4. Anna Hernández-Aguilera
  5. Salvador Sarrà-Moretó
  6. Jorge Joven
  7. Jordi Camps
  8. Antoni Castro

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Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and until September 2021, Spain suffered five waves of infection, the latter being related to the expansion of the Delta variant and with a high incidence. A vaccination campaign began in December 2020 and by the end of the fifth wave 77.3% of people had been fully vaccinated. Examining the changing dynamics of COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on outcomes among those hospitalized is essential. Our objective was to ascertain any differences in the characteristics and outcomes of hospitalized patients during that period compared to previous waves. We prospectively enrolled 200 consecutively admitted hospital patients from each wave and collected their clinical and demographic data from the medical records, including symptoms, comorbidities, deaths and whether they needed to be admitted to the Intensive Care Unit to receive assisted ventilation. We found that patients in the fifth wave were considerably younger than before, and the mortality rate fell from 22.5 to 2.0%. Admissions to the Intensive Care Unit decreased from 10 to 2%. Patients in the fifth wave had fewer comorbidities, and the age of the patients who died was higher than those who survived. Our results show a marked improvement in patient outcomes in the fifth wave, suggesting success of the vaccination campaign despite the explosion in cases due to the Delta variant.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-022-22145-9
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.14.21264933: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: This study was approved by the Comitè d’Ètica i Investigació en Medicaments (Institutional Review Board) of Hospital Universitari de Sant Joan (Resolution CEIM 040/2018, amended on 16 April 2020).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All calculations were made using the SPSS 25.0 statistical package (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A caveat to the present study is its single-center nature in a specific region of Mediterranean Europe. However, we think that the results can be extrapolated to regions and countries that have had similar circumstances, i.e. a high incidence of the Delta variant together with a high vaccination rate. At a time when the elderly population is already largely protected, a special effort must be made to vaccinate young people in order to achieve group immunity as soon as possible.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.10.14.21264933 on medRxiv