Recently, a study published by the University of California, Berkeley and other institutions in the academic journal “The BMJ” showed that the hospitalization of patients with new coronary pneumonia in the United States was longer than that of patients in China, and they were admitted to the intensive care unit ( ICU) ratio is also higher. The researchers believe that the results of the study indicate that US hospitals may be affected more severely than expected by the new crown epidemic.

Previously, many predictions of the disease burden of new coronary pneumonia were based on Chinese data, especially the number of beds and intensive care units required during the peak of the epidemic. The lead author of the study, Joseph Lewnard, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, said they found that China’s observations may not provide a sufficient basis for predicting the medical needs of the United States.

This study is titled “Incidence, clinical outcomes, and transmission dynamics of severe coronavirus disease 2019 in California and Washington: prospective cohort study”, published on May 22 in British Medical Journal.


Clinical features of patients with new coronary pneumonia admitted before April 9, 2020

Joseph Lewnard and collaborators collected anonymous medical records of nearly 960 people in Southern California, Northern California, and Washington State. Among them, a total of 1277 people were identified as patients who were hospitalized for the diagnosis of a new crown before April 9, 2020.

They found that of the 1277 patients with neopulmonary pneumonia who were hospitalized above, 42% were admitted to the intensive care unit and 18% died of neopulmonary pneumonia. Models based on Chinese data usually assume that only about 30% of inpatients need to be admitted to the intensive care unit.

The data collected by Joseph Lewnard and others also showed that the average length of stay of patients with rehabilitation and death of New Coronary Pneumonia was 10.7 days and 13.7 days, respectively, while the average length of stay of patients with death of New Crown of China was 7.5 days. In addition, 25% of the patients in the study stayed in hospital for 16 days or more. In contrast, a widely cited model of the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom assumes that the average length of stay of a new crown patient is 8 days.


The distribution of the length of hospitalization for patients with new coronary pneumonia

It is not clear yet what caused these new crowns What are the reasons for the long average hospital stay and the high proportion of patients admitted to the intensive care unit? However, the author of the paper emphasizes that data needs to be collected in different regions and different medical environments, and it cannot be overly dependent on models based on data from other countries.

Vincent Liu, the co-author of this study, analyzed that the spread of new coronary pneumonia and its impact on the local medical system have shown differences around the world, and the capabilities of various medical systems And structure may affect the local epidemic prevention and control.

Researchers also found that, since late March, the rate of transmission of the new coronavirus has begun to decline, and they believe this may be due to a small range of social distance measures. Nonetheless, the author warns that it is not yet possible to expect everything to return to normal. Author Vincent Liu said, “These data show that if we release all the mitigation measures at once, the disease will spread quickly again.”