Cohort profile: SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 hospitalised patients in Switzerland

  1. Amaury Thiabaud
  2. Anne Iten
  3. Carlo Balmelli
  4. Laurence Senn
  5. Nicolas Troillet
  6. Andreas Widmer
  7. Domenica Flury
  8. Peter W. Schreiber
  9. Miriam Vázquez
  10. Lauro Damonti
  11. Michael Buettcher
  12. Danielle Vuichard-Gysin
  13. Christoph Kuhm
  14. Alexia Cusini
  15. Thomas Riedel
  16. Yvonne Nussbaumer-Ochsner
  17. Roman Gaudenz
  18. Ulrich Heininger
  19. Christoph Berger
  20. Franziska Zucol
  21. Sara Bernhard-Stirnemann
  22. Natascia Corti
  23. Petra Zimmermann
  24. Anita Uka
  25. Anita Niederer-Loher
  26. Céline Gardio
  27. Maroussia Roelens
  28. Olivia Keiser

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Abstract

BACKGROUND SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, which emerged in China in late 2019, rapidly spread across the world with several million victims in 213 countries. Switzerland was severely hit by the virus, with 43,000 confirmed cases as of 1 September 2020. AIM In cooperation with the Federal Office of Public Health, we set up a surveillance database in February 2020 to monitor hospitalised patients with COVID-19, in addition to their mandatory reporting system. METHODS Patients hospitalised for more than 24 hours with a positive polymerase chain-reaction test, from 20 Swiss hospitals, are included. Data were collected in a customised case report form based on World Health Organisation recommendations and adapted to local needs. Nosocomial infections were defined as infections for which the onset of symptoms was more than 5 days after the patient’s admission date. RESULTS As of 1 September 2020, 3645 patients were included. Most patients were male (2168, 59.5%), and aged between 50 and 89 years (2778, 76.2%), with a median age of 68 (interquartile range 54–79). Community infections dominated with 3249 (89.0%) reports. Comorbidities were frequently reported, with hypertension (1481, 61.7%), cardiovascular diseases (948, 39.5%) and diabetes (660, 27.5%) being the most frequent in adults; respiratory diseases and asthma (4, 21.1%), haematological and oncological diseases (3, 15.8%) were the most frequent in children. Complications occurred in 2679 (73.4%) episodes, mostly respiratory diseases (2470, 93.2% in adults; 16, 55.2% in children), and renal (681, 25.7%) and cardiac (631, 23.8%) complications for adults. The second and third most frequent complications in children affected the digestive system and the liver (7, 24.1%). A targeted treatment was given in 1299 (35.6%) episodes, mostly with hydroxychloroquine (989, 76.1%). Intensive care units stays were reported in 578 (15.8%) episodes. A total of 527 (14.5%) deaths were registered, all among adults. CONCLUSION The surveillance system has been successfully initiated and provides a robust set of data for Switzerland by including about 80% (compared with official statistics) of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 hospitalised patients, with similar age and comorbidity distributions. It adds detailed information on the epidemiology, risk factors and clinical course of these cases and, therefore, is a valuable addition to the existing mandatory reporting.

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  1. Version published to 10.4414/smw.2021.20475
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.10.20246884: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The data were collected by infection control specialists or other physicians, dedicated study nurses, or medical students of the participating centres under the supervision of physicians and stored anonymously in a secure REDCap database [9] located in the Clinical Research Center of the University Hospitals of Geneva.
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)

    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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.10.20246884v1 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.10.20246884v2 on medRxiv