Risk factors associated with repositivity among COVID-19
patients
Table 3 presents the association between various potential risk
factors and repositivity among COVID-19 patients before and after
adjustment.
A
higher
repositivity
rate of males than females (23.4% [95% CI, 19.3 to 27.4] vs 18.1%
[13.9 to 22.3]) was observed, but this difference was not
statistically significant. The repositivity rate decreased with age,
with 42.9% (27.9 to 57.8) for 0-17 years, 22.0% (18.1 to 25.9) for
18-44 years, 16.3% (10.7 to 21.9) for 45-59 years and 16.2% (9.1 to
23.2) for 60 or over years (P for trend = 0.0023), and decreased
with severity, with 34.6% (27.2 to 42.0) for asymptomatic, 18.5% (10.1
to 27.0) for mild symptoms, 17.7% (14.3 to 21.2) for moderate symptoms
and 10.8% (0.8 to 20.8) for severe symptoms (P for trend
< 0.001). Manifestation of some symptoms at the first
admission, such as fever (26.7% [22.1 to 31.4] vs 16.2% [12.6 to
19.8]), was associated with an increased risk of repositivity. In
addition, comorbidities, CT lung abnormalities, and some clinical
symptoms (such as fatigue, chills, and sore throat) were not separately
assessed due to multicollinearity with age, severity and other clinical
symptoms, and the repositivity rate of COVID-19 by these variables is
shown in Table S1 .