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

We based our decision on the prognostic factors for severe COVID-19 on the guidelines from the World Health Organization and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, [1, 2] which were age 70 years and older, cardiovascular disease, cancer, COPD, severe asthma, and diabetes. Age was calculated at 31 st December 2015. An individual was then identified as having an underlying medical condition if they had a diagnosis in either the Inpatient or Outpatient Register (as primary or secondary diagnosis) or the Cancer Register within three years prior to 1 st January 2016. If data were available, we also identified related dispensations of prescriptions from the Prescribed Drug Register within the same time period. We used International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems version 10 codes (ICD-10) to identify a diagnosis and Active Therapeutic Chemical codes (ATC) to identify the dispensation of a prescription. The ICD-10 and ATC codes for underlying medical conditions were: cardiovascular disease (I20-I99), cancer (C00-C75), COPD (J41-J44), severe asthma (J45), and diabetes (E10, E11, E13, E14, O24; ATC: A10).