Co-Morbidity and COVID-19: A Study of Case Severity and Early Outcome

Abstract

Background: The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world and mutating rapidly. It is absolutely essential to evaluate the potential risk factor influencing disease progression and better understanding of high risk co-morbidities among COVID-19 patients. Objectives: To evaluate the association of serious events in COVID-19 patients according to the number and type of co-morbidities also the association of co-morbidities with the adverse events and the risk of early outcomes with any co-morbidity. Methods: This was a prospective observational study among 1,583 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted during the study period from Apr 2020 to March 2021. Odds ratio (OR) and risk ratio (RR) with respective confidence intervals have been calculated to evaluate the presence and strength of association of case severity with the presence and number of co morbidities. Results: There was 302 study subjects with one or more than one co-morbidities having the mean (SD) age of 54(15) year and 206(68.2%) male cases compared to female. The leading co-morbidities were diabetes (146, 9.2%), hypertension (142, 9%) with respiratory disease (50, 3.2%), CAD (16, 1%). Any co-morbid patient has 6 times odds of getting admitted in ICU in comparison to non-co-morbid patient while the risk ratio signifies that five times higher chance of getting admitted in ICU than any non-co-morbid patient. The chances of death in them are always higher than non-co-morbid specially diabetes and hypertensive with CAD. Conclusions: Among patients with COVID-19 disease any co-morbidity resulted to poorer clinical outcomes and more the number of co-morbidities, poorer the clinical outcomes.