Clinical characteristics and durations of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Beijing: a retrospective cohort study

Wen Zhao; Shikai Yu; Xiangyi Zha; Ning Wang; Qiumei Pang; Tongzeng Li; Aixin Li

In the present study, we reported the retrospective data of 77 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Beijing, China, with 64 (83.1%) discharged home alive by the end of follow-up. Among a small number of patients, there was a wide span of age from 1 to 94 years, suggesting that individuals of all ages are susceptible to SARS-Cov-2 infection. Intriguingly, more females (55.8%) were identified in our study, as contract to previously studies where males were reported to constitute a higher proportion of patients [2] [3] [4] 6 revealing that males had higher expression level of ACE2 receptor and thus were more susceptible to SARS-Cov-2 invasion. 14 Recently, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention presented the biggest data of COVID-19 (44,672 confirmed cases) and indicated a relatively even sex distribution (males 51.4% vs. females 48.6%). 15 These findings suggest that the sex difference found at the early stage of the outbreak might be of coincidence such as the exposure difference between sexes. In our study, most of the patients had a history of exposure to Wuhan, especially at the initial stage of the spreading in Beijing, and the number of those patients was reducing over time as along with reducing of the number of all patients. This suggested the effectiveness of quarantine of Wuhan city on the control and containment of COVID-19 in Beijing and other cities and countries as demonstrated by a more recent study. 16 Lots of patients (42.9%) got infected by family clustering, which emphasizes the importance of the self-. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.