To provide a reliable picture of the clinical impact of COVID-19 in the entire Italian population over time, we accessed the official data of the Italian Institute of Health, and containing updated statistics on the total number of COVID-19 cases, home isolations, COVID-19 hospitalizations with symptoms, COVID-19 hospitalizations in intensive care unit (ICU), and timeline of prevalence of different SARS-CoV-2 variants (first available bulletin: May 19, 2021). The evolution of clinical severity in patients with an official diagnosis of COVID-19 has considerably changed over time, decreasing from the pre-Alpha period to Omicron BA.1 predominance by ∼5-fold (from 4.53% to 0.84%) for hospitalizations with symptoms and by ∼10-fold (from 0.50% to 0.05%) for hospitalizations in ICU, respectively. Accordingly, the number of home isolations, thus reflecting milder disease, has increased from 94.97% to 99.10% during the same period. An inversion of such favourable trend could be noted after the Omicron BA.5 and (especially) BQ.1 sublineages become prevalent, since hospitalizations with symptoms and hospitalizations in ICU increased to 1.67% and 0.06% at the end of our observational period (i.e., by 1.5- and 1.8-fold, respectively) compared to the initial Omicron BA.1 period.

Timeline analysis of clinical severity of COVID-19 in the general population

Mattiuzzi, Camilla;Lippi, Giuseppe
2023-01-01

Abstract

To provide a reliable picture of the clinical impact of COVID-19 in the entire Italian population over time, we accessed the official data of the Italian Institute of Health, and containing updated statistics on the total number of COVID-19 cases, home isolations, COVID-19 hospitalizations with symptoms, COVID-19 hospitalizations in intensive care unit (ICU), and timeline of prevalence of different SARS-CoV-2 variants (first available bulletin: May 19, 2021). The evolution of clinical severity in patients with an official diagnosis of COVID-19 has considerably changed over time, decreasing from the pre-Alpha period to Omicron BA.1 predominance by ∼5-fold (from 4.53% to 0.84%) for hospitalizations with symptoms and by ∼10-fold (from 0.50% to 0.05%) for hospitalizations in ICU, respectively. Accordingly, the number of home isolations, thus reflecting milder disease, has increased from 94.97% to 99.10% during the same period. An inversion of such favourable trend could be noted after the Omicron BA.5 and (especially) BQ.1 sublineages become prevalent, since hospitalizations with symptoms and hospitalizations in ICU increased to 1.67% and 0.06% at the end of our observational period (i.e., by 1.5- and 1.8-fold, respectively) compared to the initial Omicron BA.1 period.
2023
COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Severity
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/1081066
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