Divergences on expected pneumonia cases during the COVID-19 epidemic in Catalonia: a time-series analysis of primary care electronic health records covering about 6 million people.
BMC Infect Dis
; 21(1): 283, 2021 Mar 20.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1143186
Preprint
This scientific journal article is probably based on a previously available preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
See preprint
This scientific journal article is probably based on a previously available preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
See preprint
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Pneumonia is one of the complications of COVID-19. Primary care electronic health records (EHR) have shown the utility as a surveillance system. We therefore analyse the trends of pneumonia during two waves of COVID-19 pandemic in order to use it as a clinical surveillance system and an early indicator of severity.METHODS:
Time series analysis of pneumonia cases, from January 2014 to December 2020. We collected pneumonia diagnoses from primary care EHR, a software system covering > 6 million people in Catalonia (Spain). We compared the trend of pneumonia in the season 2019-2020 with that in the previous years. We estimated the expected pneumonia cases with data from 2014 to 2018 using a time series regression adjusted by seasonality and influenza epidemics.RESULTS:
Between 4 March and 5 May 2020, 11,704 excess pneumonia cases (95% CI 9909 to 13,498) were identified. Previously, we identified an excess from January to March 2020 in the population older than 15 years of 20%. We observed another excess pneumonia period from 22 october to 15 november of 1377 excess cases (95% CI 665 to 2089). In contrast, we observed two great periods with reductions of pneumonia cases in children, accounting for 131 days and 3534 less pneumonia cases (95% CI, 1005 to 6064) from March to July; and 54 days and 1960 less pneumonia cases (95% CI 917 to 3002) from October to December.CONCLUSIONS:
Diagnoses of pneumonia from the EHR could be used as an early and low cost surveillance system to monitor the spread of COVID-19.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pneumonia
/
Electronic Health Records
/
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Aged
/
Child
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
/
Young adult
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
BMC Infect Dis
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12879-021-05985-0
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