COVID-19 hospitalisation during period of delta and omicron predominance in Malaysia: A descriptive study

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Hospital Sungai Buloh is the main COVID-19 referral centre since the pandemic started. Having a large database of COVID-19 patients, this study describes the demographic characteristics of patients who were admitted to Hospital Sungai Buloh during periods of Delta and Omicron predominance. Material(s) and Method(s) Medical records of COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized in Hospital Sungai Buloh during the period of Delta and Omicron predominance were reviewed retrospectively and analyzed. Result(s) Patient admissions during the period of Delta predominance from May-July 2021 (5815 patients) are higher than during the period of Omicron predominance from January-April 2022 (3144 subjects). Among 8959 COVID-19 patients, 55.6% of them were in the age group 60-79 years old (4977 patients). Majority were male (50.7%), Malaysian (98.5%) and diagnosed as Category 4 COVID-19 upon admission (48.6%). A total of 935 (10.4%) patients died during hospitalisation. Conclusion(s) This descriptive study serves as a baseline research for more studies in future using the same dataset. Rigorous data cleaning is currently being performed to produce more robust and reliable results.