Hospitalization, Recovery, Death, incubation period and Severity of COVID-19: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Abstract
Background: The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 disease, named “COVID-19" by the WHO, was declared Public Health Emergency Concern globally January 2020. As of 01 February, 2021, the virus already visited more than 200 countries across the globe, with a total of over 103 million confirmed cases, over 2 million deaths and over 76 million recoveries.
COVID-19 first appeared in the African continent on 15th February 2020 in Egypt. Back in April 2020, only a few African countries reported 1, 2 or 3 confirmed cases with no death; but as of 07 June the virus visited over 45 African countries already with a total of 183,474 confirmed cases, 81,367 recovered and 5,041 deaths. Moreover, country context evidence is important at least to reduce the impact of COVID 19 in Africa region.

Objective: The objective is to get cohesive understanding on hospitalization, recovery, death, incubation period and severity of COVID-19.

Methods: Systematic Review was carried out to synthesis cohesive information on hospitalization, recovery, death, incubation period and severity of the disease. This review includes a systematic literature search of PubMed and other sources like Google Scholar and Research Gate. Results: Hospitalization rate for young is as low as 1%, while it ranged from 20.7% to 31.4% for older people. Hospitalization rate was high among patients with obesity (Body Mass Index>40), and heart failure. Recovery rate ranged from 30% in China to over 70% in South Korea. Overall case fatality rate from different studies ranged from 0.1% to 6%. But this value increases to as much as over 45% for those over 75 years old. The median incubation period ranged from 4 days to 5.1 days but showed increment for the older ages. Proportion of critically ill patients ranged from 0.026% to 23%. More severe cases were seen among males than females. Conclusion: This systematic review in-sight the variation in hospitalization, recovery, death, incubation period and severity of COVID-19 pertaining to patients’ characteristics. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2021; 35(SI-1):76-81]

Key words: Hospitalization, Recovery, Death, incubation period severity, COVID-19, systematic review