Caracterização epidemiológica dos casos de covid-19 atendidos em um hospital de referência no Seridó potiguar

Abstract

In December 2019, in the Chinese city of Wuhan Covid-19 (Corona Virus disease 2019) was first detected. Patients affected by the disease reported having symptoms of the flu, such as: fever, malaise, dry cough and dyspnoea. Most are mild and moderate cases and without major complications and 15% may evolve and require oxygen supplementation, of which, about 5% of the total may come to worsen in the condition and need to be referred to intensive care units (ICU), being, in this case, lethal for more than 40% of those affected. The objective of this work is to characterize the epidemiological profile of notified cases and deaths of patients affected by the new coronavirus in a reference hospital in Seridó potiguar. The variables were analyzed: sex (female/male), age group of deaths (in years), presence or absence of comorbidities in patients who died, outcome of hospitalization and the number of hospitalizations per municipality. The largest number of reports were predominantly female, 54% of cases. 722 patients were hospitalized, of which 21% died. The majority of males is 53.3%. The most affected age group was the Elderly (> 60 years), together, the two genders account for 80.3% of deaths by Covid-19 in this hospital, 71.7% had some comorbidity and the city of origin with the highest number of inpatients was the city of Caicó with 36.8%. Measures such as health education to raise public awareness, in addition to controlling the flow of people in local commerce, closing non-essentials and blocking the municipality's borders are measures that could have a positive impact in reducing the epidemic peak. The sum of the covid-19 pandemics and chronic diseases further reinforced the importance of controlling these diseases.