Comparative study reveals hospitalized COVID-19 patients have less comorbidity than Influenza patients

A comparative study between hospitalized coronavirus and Influenza patients revealed that COVID19 patients had fewer comorbidities and lower medication use than influenza patients.

The study was done on the patients from the US and Spain.

It was published by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community.

OHDSI has established an international network of researchers and observational health databases with a central coordinating centre housed at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University.

This global network study, which included more than 34,000 COVID-19 patients from across three continents, is intended to provide greater detail about the characteristics of patients suffering from the disease, and also to help inform decision-making around the care of hospitalised patients.

Patients hospitalised with COVID-19 were more typically male in the US and Spain, but more often female in South Korea.

The ages of patients varied, but in Spain and the US, the most common age groups were between 60 to 75.

Patients hospitalised with influenza were typically older than those hospitalised with COVID-19, and more likely to be female.

Many of the patients hospitalised with COVID-19 were seen to have other health conditions.

For example, the prevalence of hypertensive disorder ranged from 24% to 70%, diabetes from 13% to 43%, and asthma from 4% to 15%, across data sources.

Despite this, however, when compared to patients hospitalised with influenza in recent years, those with COVID-19 were seen to generally be healthier.