Evolution of COVID-19 mortality over time: results from the Swiss hospital surveillance system (CH-SUR)

BACKGROUND: When  the periods of time during and after the first wave of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic in Europe are compared, the associated COVID-19 mortality seems to have decreased substantially. Various factors could explain this trend, including changes in demographic characteristic...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Swiss medical weekly 2021-11, Vol.151 (4748), p.w30105-w30105
Main Authors: Roelens, Maroussia, Martin, Alexis, Friker, Brian, Maximiano Sousa, Filipe, Thiabaud, Amaury, Vidondo, Beatriz, Buchter, Valentin, Gardiol, Céline, Vonlanthen, Jasmin, Balmelli, Carlo, Battegay, Manuel, Berger, Christoph, Buettcher, Michael, Cusini, Alexia, Flury, Domenica, Heininger, Ulrich, Niederer-Loher, Anita, Riedel, Thomas, Schreiber, Peter W., Sommerstein, Rami, Troillet, Nicolas, Tschudin-Sutter, Sarah, Vetter, Pauline, Bernhard-Stirnemann, Sara, Corti, Natascia, Gaudenz, Roman, Marschall, Jonas, Nussbaumer-Ochsner, Yvonne, Senn, Laurence, Vuichard-Gysin, Danielle, Zimmermann, Petra, Zucol, Franziska, Iten, Anne, Keiser, Olivia
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:BACKGROUND: When  the periods of time during and after the first wave of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic in Europe are compared, the associated COVID-19 mortality seems to have decreased substantially. Various factors could explain this trend, including changes in demographic characteristics of infected persons and the improvement of case management. To date, no study has been performed to investigate the evolution of COVID-19 in-hospital mortality in Switzerland, while also accounting for risk factors. METHODS: We investigated the trends in COVID-19-related mortality (in-hospital and in-intermediate/intensive-care) over time in Switzerland, from February 2020 to June 2021, comparing in particular the first and the second wave. We used data from the COVID-19 Hospital-based Surveillance (CH-SUR) database. We performed survival analyses adjusting for well-known risk factors of COVID-19 mortality (age, sex and comorbidities) and accounting for competing risk. RESULTS: Our analysis included 16,984 patients recorded in CH-SUR, with 2201 reported deaths due to COVID-19 (13.0%). We found that overall in-hospital mortality was lower during the second wave of COVID-19 than in the first wave (hazard ratio [HR] 0.70, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.63– 0.78; p 
ISSN:1424-3997
1424-3997
DOI:10.4414/SMW.2021.w30105