1 research outputs found
Enhanced surveillance of COVID-19 in secondary care in Europe: a tale of two waves
Background:
The I-MOVE-COVID-19 Consortium was established to conduct
surveillance of hospitalised COVID-19 cases in nine European countries,
aiming to describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of
severe COVID-19 in order to inform public health response.
Methods:
Data are pooled from 11 participating sites; two (England and Scotland)
submitting national data, with the remainder being from a selection
of hospitals. Descriptive analysis is performed on the pooled dataset
overall and comparing data on patients admitted from week 5 to 28 of
2020 (“first wave”) vs those admitted later (“second wave”).
Results:
Data on 84,297 hospitalised patients were submitted for 01 February 2020
- 31 January 2021. Fifty-six percent of cases (46,907/84,193) were male
and median age was 69 years. Where information was available, 44%
(25,344 /57,769) patients were recorded as having at least one chronic
condition. Ninety-five percent (7,868/8,270 and 90% (5,606/6,231)
were reported with respiratory and febrile presentations respectively.
Twenty-four percent (18,795/78,955) were admitted to intensive care
units (ICU) and 26% (19,805/76,764) died in hospital (all sites); 12%
(3,305/28,262) and 20% (5,454/27,066) respectively for all sites except
England (where ICU reporting is mandated, biasing the dataset towards
more severe outcomes as this site represents >50% of all cases). As a
percentage of all hospital admissions, both ICU admissions and deaths
decreased significantly between the first and second waves in both sexes
and across all age- groups, apart from the over 75s.
Conclusions:
Results from this multicentre European surveillance system suggest that
about one in 10 hospitalised COVID-19 patients are admitted to ICU and
one in five have fatal outcomes. Fatality and ICU admission were lower in
the second wave compared with the first.The I-MOVE-COVID-19 network has received funding from the European Commission (from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101003673).N/