Abstract

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by the global spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and has resulted from 622,119,701 confirmed cases and 6,546,118 deaths to date. Most studies of the clinical features of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are from high-income countries, with little information available for developing countries such as Ethiopia. This study aimed to assess the clinical characteristics of hospitalized COVID-19 patients and risk factors for in-hospital mortality in Hawassa, Ethiopia. This cohort included 804 consecutive laboratory-confirmed hospitalised COVID-19 patients from 24, September 2020 - 26, November 2021 at Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital. The patient characteristics at hospital admission were characterized. In-hospital mortality was modelled using Cox regression. The median age was 45[min 0.006, max 100] years and 64.1% were male. Severe cases accounted for 16.0% of the study population. The most common symptoms were general pain (68.9%), cough (68.7%), shortness of breath (65.7%), and fever (57.6%). Comorbidities were common, with 49.1% having at least one comorbidity, and 12.6% having two or more comorbidities. The most prevalent comorbidity was diabetes (15.9%), followed by hypertension (15.2%). More than half of patients (53.0%) had received treatment before being admitted to the hospital, for example, antibiotics. In univariable Cox regression analysis, sex, age, source of referral, severity status, various symptoms, and comorbidities were associated with an increased risk of death in COVID-19 patients. This study characterised a large cohort of hospitalised COVID-19 patients in Ethiopia and showed that similar to high-income countries, age, sex, comorbidities, and symptoms upon admission were associated with an increased risk of in-hospital death. The average age was remarkably low.
Keywords: COVID‐19, Clinical characteristics, date of admission, Univariate cox-ph,