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Coronaplague Roundup: Age, obesity are biggest risk factors for hospitalization

[NYPOST] When it comes to the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
, age and weight are more than just numbers.

In two new studies, NYU researchers found certain risk factors like age, obesity and chronic illness can lead to an increased risk of hospitalization for COVID-19 patients.

In one of the largest data reviews on COVID-19 cases so far, researchers at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that age and chronic illness (cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, in particular) were the leading factors that led to hospitalization for COVID-19 patients. The study, which looked at reports on 4,103 patients from March 1 through April 2, is currently under peer review and has been pre-published online.

"The risk factors we identified for hospitalization in [COVID-19] are largely similar to those associated with any type of severe disease requiring hospitalization or ICU-level care, though we were surprised that cancer and chronic pulmonary disease did not feature more prominently in the risk models," the researchers wrote in the study. "For instance, while advanced age was by far the most important predictor of hospitalization . . . 54% of hospitalized patients were younger than 65 years. This is typical of the hospitalization pattern in viral respiratory disease."

In a separate study, researchers at NYU Langone Health found that patients under 60 were at a higher risk of hospitalization due to complications from COVID-19 if they were obese. The report, which was published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, looked at the data of 3,615 patients who tested positive for the coronavirus from March 4 to April 4.








Health care workers are 10%-20% of US coronavirus cases
[AlAhram] Between 10% and 20% of U.S. coronavirus cases are health care workers, though they tended to be hospitalized at lower rates than other patients, officials reported Tuesday. But the data varied in how complete it was, researchers said. In 12 states that did a better job reporting on whether patients worked in medicine, around 11% of cases were health care workers.

Media reports said about 10% of cases in Italy and Spain were health care workers.

Compared with U.S. cases overall, larger proportions of diagnosed health care workers were women, were white, and were young or middle-aged adults. That's consistent with the demographics of who works in health care, researchers said.

About 10% of the health care workers were hospitalized with symptoms, compared with 21% to 31% of overall cases. That may reflect the younger age of the workers, as well as prioritization of testing for health care employees, the report said.
Posted by: Fred 2020-04-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=568781