Epidemiological profile of patients seen in 2020 and 2021 with a diagnosis of COVID-19 in a private hospital in Belo Horizonte

The objective was to describe the characteristics of patients admitted to a private hospital in Belo Horizonte with a positive diagnosis for COVID-19 in categories of gender, age, symptoms, ICU passage, need for mechanical ventilation and outcome. Retrospective epidemiological study was conducted in a large private hospital in Belo Horizonte with 3,034 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 2020 and December 2021. Variables: gender, age, symptoms, need for intensive care, mechanical ventilation, and mortality. Descriptive analysis used media for numerical data and absolute and relative frequencies for categorical variables. The most common symptoms in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 included cough, myalgia, headache, fever, coryza, odynophagia, dyspnea, and diarrhea. The less common symptoms were found in 17.5% of the patients studied. Cough was the most prevalent symptom among patients in the hospital analyzed, while other studies reported fever, dyspnea, and tachycardia as the most common symptoms. The need for ICU admission and use of mechanical ventilation was lower in the studied hospital compared to other studies, and the mean age of patients was also lower. Limitations include the lack of information on comorbidities and the accounting of deaths only after ICU stay. (AU)