Burden and prevalence of prognostic factors for severe covid-19 disease in Sweden

Katalin Gemes; Mats Talback; Karin Modig; Anders Ahlbom; Anita Berglund; Maria Feychting; Anthony Matthews

No patients were involved in setting the research question or the outcome choices, nor were they involved in developing plans for design or implementation of the study. No patients were asked to advise on interpretation or writing up of results. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the study population. The mean age was 41 years and around 50% of the 9.6 million individuals lived in three of the 21 counties (Stockholm, Västra Götaland and Skåne). Over 22% had at least one prognostic factor for severe COVID-19 (2,131,319 individuals), and 1.6% had at least three factors (154,746 individuals). Table 2 shows the burden and prevalence of each medical condition by age group in the study population. The prevalence of each condition generally increased as age increased; however, there was a higher prevalence of severe asthma in the youngest groups compared with all other age groups. Table 3 shows the burden and prevalence of each of the six prognostic factors in each Swedish county, and Figure 1 visualizes the ratio of the county specific prevalence of each factor to the prevalence of that factor overall in the study population. The burden and prevalence of all prognostic factors were as follows (Table 3) : the proportion of people aged 70 years and older ranged from 11.1% in Stockholm (242,208 individuals) to 17.6% in Kalmar (40,872 individuals); cardiovascular disease ranged from 6.4% in Uppsala and Stockholm (22,086 and 140,165 individuals) to 8.8% in Dalarna (24,205 individuals); cancer ranged from 1.1% in Norrbotten (2,790 individuals) to 1.6% in Halland (5,067 individuals); COPD ranged from 0.6% in Västerbotten (1,708 individuals) to 1.1% in Kalmar (2,448 individuals); severe asthma ranged from 1.8% in Västra Götaland and Örebro (29,353 and 5,243 individuals) to 2.6% in Norrbotten and Stockholm (6,407 and 56,251 individuals); and diabetes ranged from 4.0% in Stockholm (86,195) to 4.7% in Uppsala (16, 311) . The burden of each of the five underlying medical conditions stratified by age group in each county are also presented in Appendix 1. Table 4 shows the burden and prevalence of individuals with at least one, two, and three of the six prognostic factors for severe COVID-19 in each county in Sweden, and Figure 2 visualizes the ratio of the county specific prevalence of people living with at least one, two, and three factors compared with the overall prevalence in the study population. The burden and prevalence of prognostic factors were: at least one prognostic factor ranged from 19.2% in Stockholm (416,988 individuals) to 25.9% in Kalmar (60,005 individuals); at least two prognostic factors ranged from 5.5% in Stockholm (119,057 individuals) to 8.5% in Kalmar (19, 699 individuals; and at least three prognostic factors ranged from 1.3% in Stockholm (28,162 individuals) to 2.1% in Kalmar (4,839 individuals).