Factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness among 4,103 patients with COVID-19 disease in New York City

Christopher M. Petrilli; Simon A. Jones; Jie Yang; Harish Rajagopalan; Luke F. O'Donnell; Yelena Chernyak; Katie Tobin; Robert J. Cerfolio; Fritz Francois; Leora I. Horwitz

We obtained from the electronic health record the following variables: age at time of testing, sex, race as reported by the patient (aggregated into white, African American, Asian, other and unknown), ethnicity as reported by the patient (Hispanic or non-Hispanic), any past cardiac history (as defined by a history of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease or heart failure), any past pulmonary disease (as defined by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma), malignancy (excluding non-melanoma skin malignancy), diabetes, and obesity (defined by body mass index). We also obtained vital signs and first set of laboratory results where available. For multivariable modeling, we bucketed vital sign and laboratory results into categories by degree of abnormality based on clinical judgment because of non-linear associations with outcome. In the hospitalization analysis, we included only patient demographics and past history, since 1,642/2,104 (78%) patients who were not admitted were evaluated in ambulatory testing centers and did not have vitals or laboratory studies collected.