ABSTRACT
The healthcare workforce has played an integral role in fighting COVID-19 and continues to do so despite the continuous adverse outcomes. To address this issue, official public data concerning COVID-19 cases and deaths of Peruvian physicians was used to quantify the risk of death and infection by SARS-CoV-2. 20.9% Peruvian physicians were infected and 0.7% died, with the male general practitioners being the most affected group within the workforce. Notably, the Loreto region was disproportionately affected and had the highest cumulative incidence, mortality and case fatality rate. Ultimately, this identified risk group needs to be supported with sufficient resources/tools such as personal protective equipment, training, access to health care, vaccination, etc.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Physicians , COVID-19/epidemiology , Humans , Male , Personal Protective Equipment , Peru/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Currently, there is no formally accepted pharmacological treatment for COVID-19. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We included COVID-19 outpatients of a Peruvian primary care center from Lima, Peru, who were treated between April 30 - September 30, 2020, with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Logistic regression was applied to determine factors associated with case-fatality rate. RESULTS: A total of 1265 COVID-19 patients with an average age of 44.5 years were studied. Women represented 50.1% of patients, with an overall 5.9 symptom days, SpO2 97%, temperature of 37.3 °C, 41% with at least one comorbidity and 96.1% one symptom or sign. No patient treated within the first 72 h of illness died. The factors associated with higher case fatality rate were age (OR = 1.06; 95% CI 1.01-1.11, p = 0.021), SpO2 (OR = 0.87; 95% CI 0.79-0.96, p = 0.005) and treatment onset (OR = 1.16; 95% CI 1.06-1.27, p = 0.002), being the latter the only associated in the multivariate analysis (OR = 1.18; 95% CI 1.05-1.32, p = 0.005). 0.6% of our patients died. CONCLUSIONS: The case fatality rate in COVID-19 outpatients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin was associated with the number of days of illness on which treatment was started.