Likelihood of death from coronavirus after being admitted

Question

Ive looked extensively but in amongst all the stats available, I cant find the proportion of people who are admitted to hospital with coronavirus but then go on to recover - any help much appreciated!

Answer 1

This must depend on the local situation. At the beginning of the pandemic Japanese Hospitals were admitting PCR positive asymptomatic patients. Then as the disease spread Chinese authorities in Hubei were creating field hospitals (sixteen Fang Cang hospitals in Wuhan ) to house the less symptomatic patients and leaving the hospitals with ICU facilities to deal with those that needed higher level care. Some patients could not even get into hospitals and were dying at home.

The initial data from China was that 81% of infected Covid-19 patients could be managed out of hospital, 14% had severe disease and 5% have critical disease involving breathing problems and organ failure. If you needed to be intubated in Wuhan (3.2%) your chance of surviving drops to 50% or less ( under 34% in one study ).

Using data on 24 deaths that occurred in mainland China and 165 recoveries outside of China, we estimated the mean duration from onset of symptoms to death to be 17·8 days (95% credible interval [CrI] 16·9–19·2) and to hospital discharge to be 24·7 days (22·9–28·1). In all laboratory confirmed and clinically diagnosed cases from mainland China (n=70 117), we estimated a crude case fatality ratio (adjusted for censoring) of 3·67% (95% CrI 3·56–3·80). However, after further adjusting for demography and under-ascertainment, we obtained a best estimate of the case fatality ratio in China of 1·38% (1·23–1·53), with substantially higher ratios in older age groups (0·32% [0·27–0·38] in those aged <60 years vs 6·4% [5·7–7·2] in those aged ≥60 years), up to 13·4% (11·2–15·9) in those aged 80 years or older. Estimates of case fatality ratio from international cases stratified by age were consistent with those from China (parametric estimate 1·4% [0·4–3·5] in those aged <60 years [n=360] and 4·5% [1·8–11·1] in those aged ≥60 years [n=151]). Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0·66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age. Similarly, estimates of the proportion of infected individuals likely to be hospitalised increased with age up to a maximum of 18·4% (11·0–7·6) in those aged 80 years or older.

So, your chance of death depends on other factors such as age, gender and other host factors such as smoking history, hypertension, heart disease, lung disease etc. In the USA African Americans appear to be also more severely affected.

As of Friday morning, African Americans made up almost half of Milwaukee County’s 945 cases and 81% of its 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26% black. Milwaukee is one of the few places in the United States that is tracking the racial breakdown of people who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, offering a glimpse at the disproportionate destruction it is inflicting on black communities nationwide.

In Michigan, where the state’s population is 14% black, African Americans made up 35% of cases and 40% of deaths as of Friday morning. Detroit, where a majority of residents are black, has emerged as a hot spot with a high death toll. As has New Orleans. Louisiana has not published case breakdowns by race, but 40% of the state’s deaths have happened in Orleans Parish, where the majority of residents are black.

https://anesthesiology.pubs.asahq.org/article.aspx?articleid=2763453

https://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-critical-care-issues

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/27/covid-19-what-we-know-and-do-not-know-about-the-coronavirus

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

https://www.propublica.org/article/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate