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).