A new rapid screening program based on risk scores for COVID-19 patients

Area of Science:

• Infectious Diseases
• Public Health
• Epidemiology

Background:

• Hospital-related transmission is a significant factor in the spread of COVID-19.
• Effective and rapid screening strategies are crucial for COVID-19 prevention.
• Existing screening methods may lack sufficient accuracy and efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a novel COVID-19 risk score system for rapid patient screening.
• To reduce the risk of hospital-related COVID-19 transmission.
• To compare the effectiveness of the new risk score against existing screening schemes.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 335 patients, including 124 with COVID-19.
• Selection of five significant clinical attributes (exposure, cluster onset, fever, cough, atypical symptoms) to construct the risk score.
• Comparison of screening effectiveness using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for three schemes.

Main Results:

• A new COVID-19 risk score was developed using five key factors.
• The score effectively categorizes patients into low, medium, and high-risk subgroups.
• The COVID-19 risk score system demonstrated superior screening effectiveness (AUC=0.96) compared to temperature screening (AUC=0.56) and exposure/fever screening (AUC=0.85).

Conclusions:

• The developed COVID-19 risk score system enables rapid and effective identification of COVID-19 patients.
• This tool can significantly aid clinicians in managing COVID-19, particularly in areas with ongoing transmission.
• The new system offers improved sensitivity (93.6%) and specificity (86.3%) at a cut-off score of 10.