Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, obtaining information on symptoms dynamics is of essence. Here, we extracted data from primary-care electronic health records and nationwide distributed surveys to assess the longitudinal dynamics of symptoms prior to and throughout SARS-CoV-2 infection. Information was available for 206,377 individuals, including 2471 positive cases. The two datasources were discordant, with survey data capturing most of the symptoms more sensitively. The most prevalent symptoms included fever, cough and fatigue. Loss of taste and smell 3 weeks prior to testing, either self-reported or recorded by physicians, were the most discriminative symptoms for COVID-19. Additional discriminative symptoms included self-reported headache and fatigue and a documentation of syncope, rhinorrhea and fever. Children had a significantly shorter disease duration. Several symptoms were reported weeks after recovery. By a unique integration of two datasources, our study shed light on the longitudinal course of symptoms experienced by cases in primary care.
Highlights
As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, obtaining information on symptoms dynamics is of essence
We analyzed a unique dataset composed of electronic health records (EHR) from Maccabi Health Services (MHS), the second largest Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) in Israel which includes the results of SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing and primary care visits, and linked longitudinal selfreported symptoms reported as part of a nationwide survey[19], to better understand the full clinical spectrum of symptoms experienced by adults and children infected with COVID-19
Information on symptoms was available for 2471 individuals defined as positive COVID-19 cases, 56,227 defined as negative and 147,679 individuals who had no record of a PCR test for SARS-CoV-2
Summary
As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, obtaining information on symptoms dynamics is of essence. The majority of studies published to date describing the clinical course of patients with COVID-19 infection were based on retrospective data of adult hospitalized patients[3,4,5,6,7,8]. We analyzed a unique dataset composed of electronic health records (EHR) from Maccabi Health Services (MHS), the second largest Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) in Israel which includes the results of SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing and primary care visits, and linked longitudinal selfreported symptoms reported as part of a nationwide survey[19], to better understand the full clinical spectrum of symptoms experienced by adults and children infected with COVID-19
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