Researchers in England, Wales and Scotland name potential risk factors for contracting COVID-19

A cohort study of individuals from England, Wales and Scotland has revealed a few potential risk factors for individuals who could contract the respiratory condition caused by the novel coronavirus.

Following their initial data collection and analysis, researchers connected age, obesity and male sex as risk factors for COVID-19. The data in the study, published in The BMJ on May 22, goes through May 3.

Researchers, including Annemarie B. Docherty, Ewen M. Harrison, Christopher A. Green, and a larger group, observed COVID-19 patients at more than 200 acute care hospitals in Wales, England, and Scotland between Feb. 6 and April 19.

Data analysis revealed that the median patient age was 73, and patients had symptoms for an average of four days before they were admitted to the hospital.  Sixty percent of the patients admitted were male (12,068). There were 310 patients admitted who were under the age of 18, and 194 were under the age of five.

“Overall, 41% (8199/20 133) of patients were discharged alive, 26% (5165/20 133) died, and 34% (6769/20 133) continued to receive care at the reporting date. 17% (3001/18 183) required admission to high dependency or intensive care units; of these, 28% (826/3001) were discharged alive, 32% (958/3001) died, and 41% (1217/3001) continued to receive care at the reporting date. Of those receiving mechanical ventilation, 17% (276/1658) were discharged alive, 37% (618/1658) died, and 46% (764/1658) remained in hospital," wrote the study’s authors.

The authors acknowledge that this study is ongoing, and that there is a large amount of data that is missing.

“Because this paper is mainly descriptive, we have not performed any imputation for missing data, and describe the data as they stand. To reduce the impact of missing data on outcome analyses, we restricted these analyses to patients who had been admitted for at least two weeks before data extraction,” the authors wrote.