Hospitalization Rates and Characteristics of Patients Hospitalized with Laboratory-Confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 - COVID-NET, 14 States, March 1-30, 2020.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Descriptive population-based surveillance case series without an unexposed control group.
PubMed 32298251 · doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6915e3
What was done
Researchers conducted population-based surveillance across 14 US states using the COVID-19-Associated Hospitalization Surveillance Network (COVID-NET). They calculated age-stratified hospitalization rates for laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases admitted March 1–28, 2020, and analyzed demographic and clinical characteristics for patients admitted March 1–30, 2020.
What was found
Among 1,482 hospitalized patients, 74.5% were aged ≥50 years and 54.4% were male. The overall hospitalization rate was 4.6 per 100,000 population, peaking at 13.8 per 100,000 among adults aged ≥65 years. Among 178 adult patients with available comorbidity data, 89.3% had at least one underlying condition, most frequently hypertension (49.7%), obesity (48.3%), chronic lung disease (34.6%), diabetes mellitus (28.3%), and cardiovascular disease (27.8%).
Why it matters
This report provided early US population-based surveillance data showing that older age and underlying chronic conditions were prominent characteristics of individuals hospitalized with COVID-19.
Limits
Comorbidity data were available for only 12.0% (178/1,482) of hospitalized adult patients at the time of reporting. The study lacked a non-hospitalized or uninfected control group, and it did not report clinical outcomes such as mechanical ventilation, intensive care admission, or mortality.
Cited by
- supports A CDC study of approximately 1,500 hospitalized COVID-19 patients across 14 US states found that 48% were obese and 33% were African American.