It was in the last month that the United States became the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in the world with 849,090 odd cases as of today noon and more than 262,260 of them are from New York state. In the largest health system in New York, 20 percent of all those admitted for coronavirus died, while a little more than 80 percent of all patients on ventilator perished.
These results were of an analysis which is said to be the largest and most comprehensive one in the US so far. It's been almost five weeks since the coronavirus curve took an exponential turn. A new paper was published on Wednesday in JAMA Network on the state of coronavirus in New York's largest health system. Researchers find that 20 percent of those hospitalized for coronavirus died. About 88 percent of the 320 patients on the ventilator died. The average age of all those admitted was found to be 63.
Some important connections
This points us to an important fact pertaining to the percentage of COVID-19 deaths that it is almost similar to those who die usually among those admitted for respiratory illness, reported Washington Post. Similar opinion was carried by Nobel laureate Michael Levitt when it came to deaths.
The study found that among those who died, the most common comorbidities were hypertension (56.6 percent), obesity (41.7 percent) and diabetes (33.8 percent) Consistent with the previous report, asthma was absent in the top of the list of comorbidities providing scientists to consider more research.
It was a sad number to the severely ill patients in the emergency department, said Karina W Davidson, the study's lead author who is a professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell.
Study made in the epicentre of the outbreak
The analysis used the data in the electronic medical records of almost 5,700 coronavirus patients treated at Northwell Health's 12 hospitals between March 1 and April 4, all in the epicentre cities of the pandemic –New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County —giving the most credible numbers. "It's important to look to American data as we have different resources in our health care system and different demographics in our populations," Davidson said.
Further findings tell that almost 70 percent of the patients sick enough to be admitted did not get a fever. This contradicts the CDC's list that includes fever as a top symptom of novel coronavirus infection. Fever is considered as one of the symptoms to be shown in a person to get tested for coronavirus, else they would be turned away from testing centres.
This may provide a hint as to why the number of cases spiked while cautioning those with symptoms other than fever also to get tested especially those with comorbidities.
