COVID Uncovered (part 4)

Lessons from an undisclosed NHS Trust

Yesterday I stumbled upon a most peculiar result: COVID patients who died in hospital within the NHS Trust under study over the period 1st Feb – 7th Dec 2020 were healthier than non-COVID cases. A staged multivariate logistic regression model revealed incidence of chronic respiratory disease, pulmonary disease, acute myocardial infarction, cardiac arrhythmia, heart failure, other cardiac conditions, hypertension, organ failure, clotting, haemorrhage, sepsis and general inflammation to be less frequent in patients testing positive with COVID prior to death when we’d expect some of these to be more frequent.

By way of example acute myocardial infarction – a disease strongly associated with the elderly – was found to be incident in 2,020/9,469 (21.2%) of in-hospital deaths for non-COVID admissions and incident in 276/1,687 (16.4%) of in-hospital deaths for COVID admissions (p<0.001). This is most odd! In contrast, acute respiratory conditions, diseases of the bronchus, pericarditis/myocar…