Epidemiology and Clinical Characteristics of People with Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Infection during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic in Saudi Arabia

  1. Fatimah S. Alhamlan
  2. Reem S. Almaghrabi
  3. Edward B. Devol
  4. Anwar B. Alotaibi
  5. Saleh M. Alageel
  6. Dalia A. Obeid
  7. Basem M. Alraddadi
  8. Sahar I. Althawadi
  9. Maysoon S. Mutabagani
  10. Ahmed A. Al-Qahtani

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

This study provides epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of 492 consecutive patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Saudi Arabia between March and September 2020. Data were collected from electronic case reports. The cohort was 54% male, with 20.4% aged >60 years, 19.9% aged 31–40 years, and 17% aged 41–50 years. The median incubation period was 16 days, with upper and lower 95% quartiles of 27 and 10 days, respectively. Most patients (79.2%) were symptomatic. Variables significantly different between symptomatic and asymptomatic patients were age, blood oxygen saturation percentage, hemoglobin level, lymphocyte count, neutrophil to lymphocyte (NTL) ratio, and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) level. Asymptomatic patients were mostly younger, with lower body mass index and ALT and AST levels but higher lymphocyte counts, NTL ratio, and CD4, CD8, natural killer cell, IgG, and IgM levels. Factors associated with increased risk of mortality were age (>42 years) and comorbidities, particularly diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Patients who were not given an antiviral regimen were associated with better prognosis than patients who received an antiviral regimen (HR, 0.07; 95% CI, 0.011–0.25). These findings will help clinicians and policymakers adopt best management and treatment options for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.3390/medicines9050032
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.13.21260428: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: 2.1 Ethical Considerations: This study was conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki and conforms to the ethics recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
    Consent: The study protocol was approved by the Research Advisory Council (Ethics Committee) at KFSHRC (RAC #220 1047), which also waived the requirement for obtaining informed patient consent because the risk to individuals whose data were included in the study was minimal and the study used exclusively retrospective deidentified administrative records.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    An electronic case report form was developed using REDCap (a secure and flexible web-based clinical research data capture platform) that had over 500 data items for each patient, including demographic characteristics, potential virus exposure (travel history and human and animal contact), vaccination history, comorbidities, signs and symptoms, laboratory and radiologic reports, cardiac workup, medication, treatment regimen, and patient outcome.
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)
    2.3 Data and Statistical Analyses: All collected data were stored and analyzed using SAS, version 9.4, software and GraphPad, version 9.0 (Prisma).
    SAS
    suggested: (SASqPCR, RRID:SCR_003056)
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    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:
    We concluded from our data on the treatment regimens that azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine, and lopinavir/ritonavir were not effective treatment for COVID 19, and this is consistent with previous studies and the solidarity trial [30, 31] There are limitations in the current database and the main limitation is that this retrospective study was conducted during the early COVID-19 pandemic where various effective interventions were not assessed such as dexamethasone, IL6 inhibitors, Jak inhibitors and Remdesvir.

    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

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.13.21260428v1 on medRxiv