Epidemiological and Clinical Features of 156 Cases of COVID-19: A Prospective Study in Algerian Population

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Author Info

Amel Mammeri M. Ammi M. Aouadi I. Khedairia W. Djafour A. Bouriah N. Raaf H. Brahimi A. Tebaibia

Corresponding Author

Amel Mammeri
Department of Internal Medicine, El Biar Hospital, Algiers, Algeria

A B S T R A C T

Background: COVID-19 is an emerging disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. It has caused millions of infected cases and thousands of deaths since January 2020. In Algeria, the situation seems less alarming with 58,272 confirmed cases and 1,973 deaths as of November 1, 2020. Aim of Study: To describe the clinical, biological and radiological profiles of our patients with COVID-19 during the first two months of the epidemic. Methods: Our study is prospective over two months (April 12-June 10, 2020) including 156 patients based on clinical, radiological and/or immunological criteria. Results: The study involved 77 men and 79 women with COVID-19 having a mean age of 48.97 ± 14.350 years. Common symptoms included asthenia (54.5%), anorexia (26.9%), fever (19.9%) and dry cough (52.6%). Biological inflammatory syndrome occurred in 32% of patients and Lymphopenia in 46%. Chest computed tomographic scans showed minimal to moderate lesions in 85.9% of cases. 56% of patients present at least one comorbidity: diabetes (25.6%), arterial hypertension (23.7%), obesity (21%), asthma (3.1%) and cancer (1.9%). The rapid serology test was positive in only 29% of 76 patients tested while RtPCR was positive in 35 of 55 patients tested. Length of hospital stay was 10 days for a half of patients while the rest received outpatient care. All patients were treated with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and preventive heparin and were followed closely until the end of treatment. The use of another antibiotic or corticosteroid was rare (3.8% and 1.3% respectively). Only one death was recorded and no transfer to an intensive care unit. Conclusion: Our study showed that the situation was not very worrying in our population during the first two months of the epidemic. A very close surveillance of new infected cases and the analysis of their clinical profile during the following months are the subject of work in progress.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Sat 28, Nov 2020
Accepted: Tue 08, Dec 2020
Published: Mon 21, Dec 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Amel Mammeri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.CDM.2020.01.07