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Emerg Infect Dis
. 2021 Oct;27(10):2521-2528.
doi: 10.3201/eid2710.211070.
Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Data Gaps for Coronavirus Disease Deaths, Tennessee, USA
John James Parker, Rany Octaria, Miranda D Smith, Samantha J Chao, Mary Beth Davis, Celia Goodson, Jon Warkentin, Denise Werner, Mary-Margaret A Fill
- PMID: 34545796
- DOI: 10.3201/eid2710.211070
Abstract
As of March 2021, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had led to >500,000 deaths in the United States, and the state of Tennessee had the fifth highest number of cases per capita. We reviewed the Tennessee Department of Health COVID-19 surveillance and chart-abstraction data during March 15‒August 15, 2020. Patients who died from COVID-19 were more likely to be older, male, and Black and to have underlying conditions (hereafter comorbidities) than case-patients who survived. We found 30.4% of surviving case-patients and 20.3% of deceased patients had no comorbidity information recorded. Chart-abstraction captured a higher proportion of deceased case-patients with >1 comorbidity (96.3%) compared with standard surveillance deaths (79.0%). Chart-abstraction detected higher rates of each comorbidity except for diabetes, which had similar rates among standard surveillance and chart-abstraction. Investing in public health data collection infrastructure will be beneficial for the COVID-19 pandemic and future disease outbreaks.
Keywords: Black patients; COVID-19; Hispanic patients; SARS-CoV-2; Tennessee; United States; White patients; comorbidities; coronavirus disease; coronaviruses; epidemiology; ethnic groups; mortality rates; population characteristics; public health surveillance; respiratory infections; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; underlying conditions; viruses; zoonoses.