-
Emerg Med Australas · Apr 2021
Multicenter StudyEpidemiology and clinical features of emergency department patients with suspected COVID-19: Insights from Australia's 'second wave' (COVED-4).
- Gerard M O'Reilly, Robert D Mitchell, Biswadev Mitra, Hamed Akhlaghi, Viet Tran, Jeremy S Furyk, Paul Buntine, Anselm Wong, Vinay Gangathimmaiah, Jonathan Knott, Max Raos, Erica Chatterton, Carolyne Sevior, Sophie Parker, Samuel Baker, Ashley Loughman, Nicole Lowry, Dylan Freeman, Muhuntha Sri-Ganeshan, Nicole Chapman, Sherman Siu, Michael P Noonan, Smit De Villiers V Emergency and Trauma Centre, Alfred Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. School of, Peter A Cameron, and COVED Project Team.
- Emergency and Trauma Centre, Alfred Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
- Emerg Med Australas. 2021 Apr 1; 33 (2): 331-342.
ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to describe the epidemiology and clinical features of patients presenting to the ED with suspected and confirmed COVID-19 during Australia's 'second wave'.MethodsThe COVID-19 ED (COVED) Project is an ongoing prospective cohort study in Australian EDs. This analysis presents data from 12 sites across four Australian states for the period from 1 July to 31 August 2020. All adult patients who met the criteria for 'suspected COVID-19' and underwent testing for SARS-CoV-2 in the ED were eligible for inclusion. Study outcomes included a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result, mechanical ventilation and in-hospital mortality.ResultsThere were 106 136 presentations to the participating EDs and 12 055 (11.4%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 11.2-11.6) underwent testing for SARS-CoV-2. Of these, 255 (2%) patients returned a positive result. Among positive cases, 13 (5%) received mechanical ventilation during their hospital admission compared to 122 (2%) of the SARS-CoV-2 negative patients (odds ratio 2.7; 95% CI 1.5-4.9, P = 0.001). Nineteen (7%) SARS-CoV-2 positive patients died in hospital compared to 212 (3%) of the SARS-CoV-2 negative patients (odds ratio 2.3; 95% CI 1.4-3.7, P = 0.001). Strong clinical predictors of the SARS-CoV-2 test result included self-reported fever, sore throat, bilateral infiltrates on chest X-ray, and absence of a leucocytosis on first ED blood tests (P < 0.05).ConclusionsIn this prospective multi-site study during Australia's 'second wave', a substantial proportion of ED presentations required SARS-CoV-2 testing and isolation. Presence of SARS-CoV-2 on nasopharyngeal swab was associated with an increase in the odds of death and mechanical ventilation in hospital.© 2020 Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.