The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Syrian Refugees and Turkish Citizens in Turkey

Abstract

There is no doubt that the pandemic has already led to devastating social, economic and political effects that left deep and longstanding scars. In the longer term, we should look at ways to better prevent and manage such crises and ensure that the world makes full use of what we will learn from this one. Therefore studies based on real data on Covid-19 are important to strengthen the fight against the pandemic. This is extremely useful for developing an integrated global response as an investment for our future. For this reason, we carried out this research to explore the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection and socio-demographic factors, severity of disease, mortality rates and comorbidity on 26,835 inpatients and 47, 875 outpatients with Covid-19, whom 2066 (7.7% of inpatients) and 2090 (4.4% of outpatients) were Syrian refugees hospitalized and admitted to the outpatient clinics located in 6 different regions of the country, between March 2020 and June 2022. The main objective of this research is to explore the differences of socio-demographic factors, comorbidities, treatment schemes etc. between Syrian refugees and Turkish citizen as well as identified the associations between co-morbidities and clinical outcomes, and its impact on the mortality of inpatients with Covid-19. The research also investigated the frequency of SARS-CoV-2 infection symptoms, the treatment applied, length of stay in ICU and hospital, clinical symptoms and radiological findings, the impact of comorbidity, vaccination status and other factors on the course of Covid-19 diagnosed patients among two different populations. Out of 4.395 Syrian refugees and patients with other nationalities whom diagnosed as Covid-19; 50.7 % are found to be male 49.3 % female among Syrian refugees. The mean age is found to be 33.1 among Syrian refugees while this is 52.5 for Turkish Citizen and the relationship between age groups and nationality is determined statistically significant. Having at least one Covid symptoms is 57% among Syrian refugees while this has been determined as 66.9% among Turkish citizen. It was found that out of 69.815 Turkish citizen 39.1 % and 4.156 Syrian refugees 22.3 % with Covid-19 have co-morbid conditions. It was determined that 11.1% of Syrian patients with COVID-19 were smokers. In Turkish citizen patients, this rate is 8.5%. The mortality rate among Syrian patient was determined as 13.0%, while this amount is 15.1% among Turkish patients.