Clinical Attributes and Outcomes of Covid-19 Patients

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Coronavirus Disease-2019 (Covid-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 a pandemic in March 2020. Despite extensive research on Covid-19, very little data was available regarding the clinical characteristics and outcomes of infected individuals in developing countries like Bangladesh during the early phase of the pandemic. To address this gap, this cross-sectional study was conducted in Bangladesh to identify the clinical attributes and outcomes of Covid-19 patients. The aim was to find out the clinical attributes during the Covid-19 illness and outcomes after the illness in terms of current functional status among Bangladeshi Covid-19 patients. This cross-sectional study performed in 2020 was conducted among conveniently selected 124 positive patients from International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) laboratory in Dhaka city, where samples from different parts of the country were sent for test. The patients included in the study were tested positive in May 2020 at the icddr,b laboratory, which was one of the few facilities equipped for Covid-19 testing in the country at that time. Data were collected by telephone interview using a semi-structured questionnaire and outcomes were measured by the Post-Covid-19 Functional Status Scale (Version 2). The mean age was found 37.14±13.24 years and 66.1% were residents of Dhaka city. Among the respondents, the predominant symptoms were fever (54.0%), the mean duration of which was 2.62±3.646 days and cough (33.1%) the mean duration of which was 3.65±7.709 days. In this study, 32.3% had comorbidity and hypertension was predominant among them (20.2%). After about 07 months of the illness, 69.4% had no functional limitations, 25.0% had negligible functional limitations and 2.4% had died after being diagnosed. This study reveals that about two-thirds of the Covid-19 patients had no functional limitations after 07 months of their illness. This study also found a significant association between the current functional status with the number of comorbidities (p<0.001) and other clinical attributes like increasing age, presence of symptoms and place of treatment. Regular follow-ups and further multicenter studies to improve understanding of the disease make up the recommendations based on these findings.