COVID-19 Severity and Prognosis Prediction: An Investigation of The Current Available Criteria

Introduction: Since its prevalence, Covid-19 has become one of the biggest health problems around the world, which has resulted in the loss of millions of lives. Considering preventive measures, both virulence and contagion of the disease must be considered the first essential step in reducing the burden of the disease and its mortality; therefore, the present study is to determine the epidemiological characteristics affecting the survival rate and severity of Covid-19 in 564 patients hospitalized in Imam Reza (AS) Mashhad Hospital, in a one-year-period since 2018.Methods: Patients admitted to the COVID-19 wards of Imam Reza (AS) Hospital in the period from March 2020 to January 2021 were included in the study and after collecting information through the designed checklist, the obtained data was entered into SPSS 26 software and analyzed statistically.Results: Out of 564 patients with a mean (standard deviation) age of 58.8 (16.7) years, 338 (59.9%) were male. A significant relationship was observed between increasing age, male gender, underlying hypertension disease, the duration of symptoms until hospitalization, NEWS score before hospitalization and the increase in the mortality rate of patients (p<0.05). Also, the strongest relationship was observed between increasing age and mortality (P-value = 0.001 and df = 65.9, and 95%CI = 6.6-18.2).Conclusion: As people over the age of 50 alongside patients with underlying disease are at a higher risk of getting affected, special measures and policies must be considered in this matter. Also, using the NEWS scoring system can help in predicting the prognosis of the disease.