SARS-Cov-2 Viral Load as an Indicator for COVID-19 Patients’ Hospital Stay

  1. Salman Al Ali
  2. AbdulKarim AbdulRahman
  3. Omar Yaghi
  4. Essam M. Janahi
  5. Manaf Al-Qahtani

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Abstract

Background/objective

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a global threat to the public health. There is a challenge in measuring the patient’s length of hospital stay and managing the healthcare resources to handle the situation successfully. Our objective is to use the qPCR cycle of threshold (Ct) as a tool in evaluating the severity of the infection and hence the length of hospital stay to better utilize and manage the healthcare resources.

Methods

This cross sectional study was carried out on 306 patients who admitted to COVID-19 care centers in Kingdom of Bahrain from 20 th March 2020 to 5 th April 2020. Standard qPCR was used to estimate the viral load and data were analyzed to investigate the relationship between Ct values and various variables.

Results

Out of 306 patients, 2 deaths, 1 active stable case and 303 recovered cases were reported. Ct value was significantly and negatively associated (P value <0.001) with length of hospital stay. The viral clearance was also inversely associated with the Ct values.

Conclusion

Ct value was inversely associated with hospital stay duration (and time to viral clearance), higher the Ct value is indicative of faster time to viral clearance. This association could help to better manage the infection and resources allocation.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.04.20226365: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical Approval: The protocol and manuscript for this study were reviewed and approved by the National COVID-19 Research and Ethics Committee in Bahrain (Approval code: CRT-COVID2020-004).
    Consent: Informed consent was waived by the National COVID-19 Research and Ethical Committee for this study due to its retrospective and observational nature and the absence of any patient identifying information
    IACUC: Informed consent was waived by the National COVID-19 Research and Ethical Committee for this study due to its retrospective and observational nature and the absence of any patient identifying information
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis was performed using STATA statistical computer package (StataCorp. 2013. Stata Statistical Software).
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations of this study include that it was cross sectional and that the number of symptomatic cases were few in number. The number of patients with multiple comorbidities were few and therefore a model to take into account the protective effect of a high Ct value could not be determined.

    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.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.04.20226365v1 on medRxiv