A Retrospective Study on Prevalence and Profile of Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction Positive Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 Samples Tested in a Tertiary Care Hospital, South India

Abstract

Introduction: In December 2019, the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 disease was reported in Wuhan, China, which was later re-named by the World Health Organization (WHO) as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Severe illness was seen in approximately 20%–30% of patients needing intensive care unit intervention. Some of them presented with acute respiratory distress syndrome, Shock, acute cardiac injury, organ dysfunction, and acute renal injury. Aim: This study aims to estimate the prevalence of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)-positive COVID-19 samples among the total samples tested and their profile among the positive COVID-19 samples at a tertiary care hospital, south India, and will also highlight the comorbid conditions associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Materials and Methods: Nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal samples from suspected COVID-19 patients were collected and tested by real-time RT-PCR and the targeted genes were identified. Results: In our study, the prevalence of COVID-19 RT-PCR positivity was found to be 3.1%. Among the positive samples, males were found to be 58.2% and females were 41.8%. Symptomatic patients were less of which 17.65% were male and 7.98% were female. Among the positive patients, 83 patients had severe symptoms that needed intensive care and died of complications. The patients with comorbid conditions had diabetes as the leading cause of death. Conclusion: The present study concluded that mortality was found to be more among COVID-positive males, elderly people above 60 years of age with comorbid conditions.