On February 23, the Institute of Health Analysis published detailed information on the deaths and rates of hospitalization at Covid-19. In Slovakia, the public finally has more detailed information on hospitalization as well as mortality for individual groups of the population. Who is most at risk and what are the numbers of hospitalizations in Slovakia? Let's look at the official numbers from Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic
The publication itself brings us more data:
"As is already known, the risk of hospitalization and severe disease increases significantly with age. It is a well-known fact that patients over the age of 60 most often end up in hospital. Nevertheless, the youngest hospitalized patient with COVID-19 was less than one year old, while the oldest patient was 101 years old. Nearly 7.2% people out of a total of cases during the pandemic jumped in the hospital.
Of the hospitalized patients, almost 8% ends up on the JIS and 9% ends up on the UPV. 23% succumbs to the disease during hospitalization. Figure 2 shows the distribution of hospitalized patients by age. The median age of hospitalized patients is 69 years. The most hospitalized patients, more than 8000 belonged to the age category of 70-80 years. The second largest group of hospitalized people are people aged 60-70 with almost 7,500 patients. "
Covid-19 mortality (CFR) by age in Slovakia
| Age | Number of positive | Hospitalized | JIS | UPV | Deaths | Mortality |
| 0-9 | 9223 | 349 | 26 | 19 | 5 | 0,05 % |
| 10-19 | 33816 | 218 | 12 | 4 | 2 | 0,01 % |
| 20-29 | 64040 | 542 | 23 | 13 | 9 | 0,01 % |
| 30-39 | 75594 | 1020 | 64 | 60 | 29 | 0,04 % |
| 40-49 | 88396 | 2102 | 210 | 171 | 116 | 0,13 % |
| 50-59 | 72603 | 3968 | 479 | 394 | 440 | 0,61 % |
| 60-69 | 46046 | 7383 | 984 | 870 | 1369 | 2,97 % |
| 70-79 | 22315 | 8392 | 787 | 701 | 2308 | 10,34 % |
| 80-89 | 11212 | 5689 | 268 | 229 | 2224 | 19,84 % |
| „90+ | 2352 | 998 | 21 | 19 | 450 | 19,13 % |
It should be added that this mortality is based on available information, it is likely that the number of positive cases is actually higher. The figures present the CFR (Case fatality rate) which tells us about the mortality from the captured cases, the real - infectious mortality (IFR) - will be lower in percentage. According to some epidemiologists, the number of positive cases is 2-3 times higher than the official numbers.
Length of hospitalization
During the first wave of the pandemic, relatively few people were hospitalized since
strict measures have kept the epidemic curve under control.
During the fall, however, these honors began to grow significantly. At present, despite the relatively strict restrictions in force in Slovakia, there is still no noticeable change in the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19.
The number of daily cases has a declining trend, but the number of hospitalized patients does not correlate with these facts. One of the possible hypotheses explaining this condition is the just mentioned higher infectivity of various mutations, such as the so-called British variant, also referred to as B.1.1.7. Figure 1 shows the development of income and discharge of patients diagnosed with COVID-19.
Basic information about the length of hospitalization:
- minimum length of hospitalization: 1 day
- maximum length of hospital stay: 61 days
- median length of hospital stay: 9 days
- standard deviation of length of hospital stay: 9.75
- interquartile range: 9 days (6-15)
These values can be seen in the following figure, which represents
empirical density of length of hospital stay.
Data source: Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, Hospitalizations during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Jakub Cervený, Matej Mišík from Kristián Šufliarsky §
February 23, 2021 Institute of Health Policy
References
Rees, EM, ES Nightingale, Y. Jafari, NR Waterlow, S. Clifford, CAB Pearson, T. Jombart, SR Procter, and GM Knight (2020). Covid-19 length of hospital stay: a systematic review and data synthesis. medRxiv.
