Demographics and clinical characteristics of non-severe and severe COVID-19 patients with chronic airway diseases
A total of 1888 patients were admitted. Fifty-nine patients with underlying chronic airway inflammation, including COPD (0.95%), asthma (0.53%), and chronic bronchitis (1.64%) were confirmed to have SARS-CoV-2 infection. Thirty-three patients were classified as non-severe patients and twenty-six patients were classified as severe patients. Although COPD was more common in severe COVID-19 patients when compared with non-severe COVID-19 patients (42% vs. 21%), the difference was not statistically significant.
The median age for all patients was 71 years (interquartile range, 57 – 80) and more than half of them (54%) were over 70 years old. The majority (71%) of patients were male (Table 1). There was no significant difference in age and sex between non-severe and severe patients. Thirty-one (53%) patients had one or more comorbidities besides the three chronic airway diseases, with cardiovascular disease (46%) and endocrine system disease (15%) being the most common comorbidity. There were no significant differences in the presence of these comorbidities between the non-severe and severe COVID-19 patients. Half of the patients had smoking histories or current smokers.
The most common symptoms were fever (83%), cough (73%), fatigue (47%) and dyspnea (42%). Dyspnea was more common in severe patients compared to non-severe patients (65% vs. 24%, p = 0.001) (Table 1).