Demographics of COVID-19 hospitalisations and related fatality

The assessment of hospitalisations and intensive care is crucial for planning health care resources needed over the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Nonetheless, comparative empirical assessments of COVID-19 hospitalisations and related fatality risk patterns at large scale are lacking. This is even more crucial as population health interventions, adopted to control earlier epidemic stages, are lifted, but vaccination programmes remain a policy challenge. This paper exploits anonymised, individual-level data on SARS-CoV-2 confirmed infections collected and harmonized by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to profile the demographics of COVID-19 hospitalised patients across nine European countries during the first pandemic wave (February – June, 2020). We estimate the role of demographic factors for the risk of in-hospital mortality, and present a case study exploring individuals’ co-morbidities based on a subset of COVID-19 hospitalised patients available from the Dutch health system. We find that hospitalisation rates are highest among individuals with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection who are not only older than 70 years, but also 50-69 years. The latter group has a longer median time between COVID-19 symptoms’ onset and hospitalisation than those aged 70+ years. Men have higher hospitalisation rates than women at all ages, and particularly above age 50.

GHIO Daniela;  BIGNAMI Simona;  STILIANAKIS Nikolaos; 

2022-09-16

ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD

JRC121763

0168-8510 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851022001889?via%3Dihub,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC121763,   

10.1016/j.healthpol.2022.07.005 (online),