• Anant Mohan, Pawan Tiwari, Sushma Bhatnagar, Ankit Patel, Abhishek Maurya, Lalit Dar, Sourabh Pahuja, Rakesh Garg, Nishkarsh Gupta, Biswajeet Sahoo, Ritu Gupta, Ved Prakash Meena, Saurabh Vig, Anuja Pandit, Saurabh Mittal, Karan Madan, Vijay Hadda, Tanima Dwivedi, Aashish Choudhary, Megha Brijwal, Manish Soneja, Randeep Guleria, Brajesh Ratre, Balbir Kumar, Shweta Bhopale, Smriti Panda, Angel Rajan Singh, Sheetal Singh, and Laxmitej Wundavalli.
• Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
• Indian J Med Res. 2020 Jul 1; 152 (1 & 2): 61-69.

Background & ObjectivesIn December 2019, a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in China and rapidly spread globally including India. The characteristic clinical observations and outcomes of this disease (COVID-19) have been reported from different countries. The present study was aimed to describe the clinico-demographic characteristics and in-hospital outcomes of a group of COVID-19 patients in north India.MethodsThis was a prospective, single-centre collection of data regarding epidemiological, demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters, management and outcome of COVID-19 patients admitted in a tertiary care facility in north India. Patient outcomes were recorded as death, discharge and still admitted.ResultsData of 144 patients with COVID-19 were recorded and analyzed. The mean age of the patients was 40.1±13.1 yr, with 93.1 per cent males, and included 10 (6.9%) foreign nationals. Domestic travel to or from affected States (77.1%) and close contact with COVID-19 patients in congregations (82.6%) constituted the most commonly documented exposure. Nine (6.3%) patients were smokers, with a median smoking index of 200. Comorbidities were present in 23 (15.9%) patients, of which diabetes mellitus (n=16; 11.1%) was the most common. A significant proportion of patients had no symptoms (n=64; 44.4%); among the symptomatic, cough (34.7%) was the most common symptom followed by fever (17.4%) and nasal symptoms (2.15%). Majority of the patients were managed with supportive treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin given on a case-to-case basis. Only five (3.5%) patients required oxygen supplementation, four (2.8%) patients had severe disease requiring intensive care, one required mechanical ventilation and mortality occurred in two (1.4%) patients. The time to reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) negativity was 16-18 days.Interpretation & ConclusionsIn this single-centre study of 144 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 in north India, the characteristic findings included younger age, high proportion of asymptomatic patients, long time to PCR negativity and low need for intensive care unit care.

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