Fever is the most common symptom in patients with COVID-19

Objectives:
What are the risk factors of COVID-19?

Study design:
This review article included 21 clinical studies with a total of 47,344 patients (24,419 male and 22,925 females).
The number of cases in the selected studies varied by approximately 3722-fold and ranged from 12 to 44,672 cases.
The sex ratio (male to female) was 1.06 and the overall average age of the subjects was greater than 40 years.

The risk of publication bias was low in this meta-analysis (review article).

Results and conclusions:   
The investigators found the incidence of fever, cough, fatigue and dyspnea symptoms were 85.6% [95% CI = 81.3% to 89.9%], 65.7% [95% CI = 60.1% to 71.4%], 42.4% [95% CI = 32.2%to 52.6%] and 21.4% [95% CI = 15.3% to 27.5%].

The investigators found the prevalence of diabetes was 7.7% [95% CI = 6.1% to 9.3%], hypertension was 15.6% [95% CI = 12.6% to 18.6%], cardiovascular disease was 4.7% [95% CI = 3.1% to 6.2%] and malignancy was 1.2% [95% CI = 0.5% to 1.8%].

The investigators found the complications, including ARDS risk, ranged from 5.6% to 13.2%, with the pooled estimate of ARDS risk at 9.4%, acute cardiac injury at 5.8% [95% CI = 0.7% to 10.8%], acute kidney injury at 2.1% [95% CI = 0.6% to 3.7%] and shock at 4.7% [95% CI = 0.9% to 8.6%].

The investigators found the risks of severity and mortality ranged from 12.6% to 23.5% and from 2.0% to 4.4 %, with pooled estimates at 18.0% and 3.2%, respectively.

The investigators found the percentage of critical cases in diabetes and hypertension was 44.5% [95% CI = 27.0% to 61.9%] and 41.7% [95% CI = 26.4% to 56.9%], respectively.

The investigators concluded fever is the most common symptom in patients with COVID-19. The most prevalent comorbidities are hypertension and diabetes which are associated with the severity of COVID-19. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and acute cardiac injury may be the main obstacles for patients to treatment recovery. The case severe rate and mortality is lower than that of SARS and MERS.

Original title:
Prevalence and Severity of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis by Hu Y, Sun J, […], Xu Y.

Link:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7195434/

Additional information of El Mondo:
Find more information/studies on coronavirus right here.