A recent study has revealed that COVID-19 patients in the United States are more likely to be sicker, in the ICU or in the hospital for longer than patients in China.
Drug Topics announced that a study led by the University of California, Berkeley, and Kaiser Permanente showed that the U.S. was facing poor results in their health care responses to the coronavirus.
“The epidemiology of COVID-19 in the U.S. remains poorly described, including clinical variables of disease progression, the risk of admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), and death by patient age and sex, and the duration of hospital stay,” the authors of the study wrote. “As such, efforts to forecast trajectories of the epidemic to guide planning and response in the U.S. and other high income settings have relied almost entirely on data from China to inform these variables, which might not adequately reflect clinical circumstances elsewhere.”
Out of 1,101 patients in California, 333 were admitted to the ICU. The study’s members have made estimates that the ICU admission is likely as high as 40.7% and the chance of death is 18,9%, growing higher as age increases. Individuals who are 80 years or older in this group are thought to be at a 37.3% chance of being admitted to the ICU.
Males were more likely to be sent to the ICU than females and the largest grouping of ages were those from 48 to 72, which comprised 58%.
The United States has more than 1,790,000 cases of the coronavirus and 104,000 deaths. The study looked at roughly 9.6 million medical records of Kaiser Permanente’s health care members within the areas of northern California, southern California and Washington state from January to April 22.
The hospital admissions have declined or stabilized since the successful implementation of social distancing.
