Risk Factors of COVID-19 among Patients Attending a Tertiary Care Centre in Delhi: A Case Control Study

Abstract

Introduction: COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus-2 (SARS CoV-2). Therefore, there is paucity of data on risk factors of COVID-19 in India which will help in designing preventive measures. Objective: To determine the risk factors of COVID-19 patients attending a tertiary care institution. Methods: The study was conducted at tertiary care hosipital in South Delhi, India among the patients admitted in Covid-19 wards or visiting the hospital for testing of SARS CoV-2 infection. Contact data of test results was collected from the medical record and detailed information was collected through telephone calls. 103 cases were selected who were found test positive by RT PCR and 103 negatives were selected as controls. Data was collected using pre-tested Questionnaire. The data were first captured in paper-based case record form and then entered in a Microsoft Excel and analyzed in SPSS Software version 21.0. Result: The mean age of all the participants was 37.63±15.32 years. On comparing cases and controls, it was found that symptoms like fever, general weakness, cough, sore throat, breathlessness and headache were significantly associated with cases, having an odds ratio of greater than 1 and p value< 0.05. On analysing various underlying medical conditions amongst controls and cases, it was found that there was a significant difference among cases and controls who had Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and Hypertension (p-value: 0.001) with a high odds ratio of 6.130 and 5.964 respectively. Around half of the cases (54.4%) and 23.3% of controls reported to have faced discrimination or changed attitude of their neighbours after revealing their RT-PCR report and this difference was statistically significant (p-value 0.001). Conclusion: Study revealed that majority of symptoms were not predictors of COVID-19 and only occupations and history of contact remained significant risk factors of COVID-19 in multivariate analysis. A multicenter research study is required to learn more about risk factors.