ABSTRACT
The potential need of hospitalization for patients with acute respiratory COVID-19 infection caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus is a critical decision, as it has a direct effect on the potential response. In addition, it leads to an allocation of resources (bed, care, and medical personnel) that, given the pandemic, are limited. According to official information reported since March 1, 2020 and updated to June 30, 2021, an ensemble of classifiers weighted by the cross-entropy information measure is proposed. We considered data based on the knowledge of a set of features before a wide availability of vaccines or identified variants of the virus were present. The aim is to contribute toward the enhancement of a better-informed assessment of risk by the general population when exposed to the disease in the aforementioned period. The results show an improvement in the detection of cases susceptible to hospitalization, with an accuracy of 91.46%, and in a restrictive scenario, there is a preventive alert to patients, even though under the established criteria should not be admitted, to remain under monitoring to anticipate the evolution of the disease to a severe stage. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.