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Title: | Epidemiological Study of COVID-19 Infections: Case of Ga East Municipal Hospital Treatment Centre - Kwabenya-Ghana |
Authors: | Oduro-Mensah, E Asubonteng, D Crankson, S |
Issue Date: | 13-Aug-2021 |
Publisher: | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory |
Citation: | Oduro-Mensah, E., Asubonteng, D. and Crankson, S. (2021) 'Epidemiological Study of COVID-19 Infections: Case of Ga East Municipal Hospital Treatment Centre - Kwabenya-Ghana', medRxiv preprint, 2021.08.11.21261917, pp. 1 - 20. doi: 10.1101/2021.08.11.21261917. |
Abstract: | Background: The COVID-19 pandemic still poses a considerable threat to global health, resulting in an unprecedented demand for regular research to continuously identify and update its risk profiles to ensure relevant interventions. Objectives :This study aimed to examine the epidemiological characteristics of the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana and identify risk factors for severe COVID-19 disease. Method: This was a cross-sectional study involving the data of patients with COVID-19 clinically managed at the Ga-East Municipal Hospital, the main COVID-19 treatment centre in Ghana, from 21st March to 21st June 2020. The data were retrieved from the electronic medical records and folders of the patients. It included sociodemographic characteristics, COVID-19 disease severity, and treatment outcomes. Binomial logistic regression was used to identify risk factors of severe COVID-19 illness. Result: Among the 360 COVID-19 cases in this study, 55.3% were males, and 44.7% were females. Their mean age was 39.9±16.7years. Most of them were Ghanaians (92.8%) and employed (72.5%). The majority (93%) presented with mild disease, and hypertension (19.2%) was the most common comorbidity. The average length of hospital admission was 10.6±6.4day. Many of the cases recovered (98.6%), resulting in a case fatality of 1.4%. Finally, the logistic regression showed that increasing age (OR=1.12, p= 0.002) and diabetes mellitus (OR=19.85, p=0.007) are risk factors for severe COVID-19 disease. Conclusion: Findings from the study confirmed that increasing age and diabetes mellitus are risk factors for severe COVID-19 disease. Thus, Ghana could prioritise these identified populations when implementing interventions to reduce the COVID-19 disease burden. |
Description: | This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer-review. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice. Strength and limitations of this study: • This study is one of the few studies exploring the risk factors for severe COVID-19. disease in Ghana; thus, it presents novel context-specific findings that could inform COVID-19 case management in Ghana. • The study was limited in drawing a causal association between the explanatory and outcome variables due to the cross-sectional design. • The study included only one COVID-19 treatment centre. Consequently, the findings may not be generalizable to the entire COVID-19 population in Ghana, even though the included centre is the main COVID-19 treatment centre. |
URI: | https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/30841 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.11.21261917 |
Other Identifiers: | ORCiD: Ebenezer Oduro-Mensah https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8888-3439 ORCiD: Shirley Crankson https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8344-0172 |
Appears in Collections: | Dept of Health Sciences Research Papers |
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Preprint.pdf | Copyright: The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. | 331.87 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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