Risk factors and indicators for COVID-19 severity: Clinical severe cases and their implications to prevention and treatment

ABSTRACT

The new coronavirus is a highly infectious and lethal RNA coronavirus, which may have been from a bat parasitic virus through its infection and evolution in a mammalian intermediate host. The new coronavirus has caused a pandemic of more than 24 million infections and more than 800 thousand deaths in a short period of time without strict and standard physical insulation. It has severely affected human health and economic development, and it is still threatening people's lives today. Its typical characteristics are the refractory nature and high mortality of clinically severe diseases, which lead to excessive consumption and even collapse of medical resources. Therefore, the clinical severe cases in the literature were analyzed, the risk factors of severe COVID-19 were summarized and potential severe risk markers were explored to guide the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Nineteen risk factors were highlighted that suggested severe illness of the new coronavirus from three aspects individual characteristics, disease factors, and biomarkers. Overall, it is recommended that people with the above risk factors should be given prior protection during the prevention process, and relevant markers should be monitored in confirmed patients to reduce severe mortality and medical resource consumption. © 2020 IEEE.