COVID-2019-2020-2021: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The world has faced the pandemic of COVID-19 in March 2020 and still it continues to affect in 2021. There is a great variation about the course of the disease and its features. Hence, in the present systemic review, we intend to determine the pooled estimations in the clinical features and prognosis along with the subgroups based on the severity of the disease in various regions of the world.

Online data were collected from the search engines of EBSCO, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus. The searched terms were COVID 19, CORONA, SARS-CoV-2, clinical features, Wuhan, etc. The study articles were collected that from January 2020 to February 2021. Based on the PRISMA guidelines, a meta-analysis was performed.

A total of 5067 articles were selected, of which 176 were finalized for the study. There were a total of 11 countries that were included, with a total of 2½ lakh participants. Mean age was 47.5 years. Around 22.5% had comorbidities. The mortality was 5.5%. We observed a strong association between the medical condition of the patient and the severity of the infection. In severe cases, the most common symptoms were respiratory and gastrointestinal. The mortality was registered in those with pneumonia and end-organ failure.

It can be concluded from this meta-analysis that in a fourth of the positive patients, the disease was severe. In nearly 6% of the COVID-19 patients, mortality was seen. Patients with comorbidities and the severe form of the disease should be closely monitored.