Prevalence and factors related to infection and mortality due to COVID-19 among patients of Shohada Ghaen Hospital, Ghaen, Iran, 2020

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging disease, whose first case was reported in December 2019, and rapidly affected the world. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the frequency and factors associated with morbidity and mortality due to COVID -19 in Ghaen, Iran.

This retrospective descriptive-analytical study used the information sources of the portal of Shohada Ghaen Hospital, Gaen, Iran, from March 2020 to December 2021, which was collected from 1,124 patients with suspected respiratory infection referring to the hospital. Data using Chi-square and Fisher's exact test for univariate relationships. Moreover, two-way logistic regression was used to investigate the causal relationships, and P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.

In this study, the mean age of participants (n=1,124) was obtained at 51.6±24.5 years, and 546 (48.6%) subjects had a positive COVID-19 test by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, among whom 65 (11.9%) cases passed away. Clinical symptoms of body aches, coughs, diarrhea, and shortness of breath were associated with a positive COVID-19 test. It was also revealed that habitat, diabetes, cardiovascular and lung diseases, age, and job were risk factors of COVID-19 infection, and hospitalization in the ICU and age were identified as risk factors for COVID-19-caused death (P<0.05).

In the present study, cough and shortness of breath were found to be the most frequent symptoms among patients and deceased individuals. Since these symptoms may be associated with a worse prognosis, they require the special attention of medical staff. The findings of this study also showed that the elderly were more at risk of death from this disease than other age groups, which increased the need for more education and attention to this group of society.