tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
- Georg Marcus Fröhlich[SUP]1,2[/SUP] , Marlieke E. A. De Kraker[SUP]3[/SUP] , Mohamed Abbas[SUP]3[/SUP] , Olivia Keiser[SUP]4[/SUP] , Amaury Thiabaud[SUP]4[/SUP] , Maroussia Roelens[SUP]4[/SUP] , Alexia Cusini[SUP]5[/SUP] , Domenica Flury[SUP]6[/SUP] , Peter W. Schreiber[SUP]7[/SUP] , Michael Buettcher[SUP]8[/SUP] , Natascia Corti[SUP]9[/SUP] , Danielle Vuichard-Gysin[SUP]10,11[/SUP] , Nicolas Troillet[SUP]11,12[/SUP] , Julien Sauser[SUP]3[/SUP] , Roman Gaudenz[SUP]13[/SUP] , Lauro Damonti[SUP]14[/SUP] , Carlo Balmelli[SUP]11,15[/SUP] , Anne Iten[SUP]3[/SUP] , Andreas Widmer[SUP]11,16[/SUP] , Stephan Harbarth[SUP]3,11[/SUP] , Rami Sommerstein[SUP]11,14,17[/SUP]

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease has frequently been compared with seasonal influenza, but this comparison is based on little empirical data.
Aim
This study compares in-hospital outcomes for patients with community-acquired COVID-19 and patients with community-acquired influenza in Switzerland.
Methods
This retrospective multi-centre cohort study includes patients > 18 years admitted for COVID-19 or influenza A/B infection determined by RT-PCR. Primary and secondary outcomes were in-hospital mortality and intensive care unit (ICU) admission for patients with COVID-19 or influenza. We used Cox regression (cause-specific and Fine-Gray subdistribution hazard models) to account for time-dependency and competing events with inverse probability weighting to adjust for confounders.
Results
In 2020, 2,843 patients with COVID-19 from 14 centres were included. Between 2018 and 2020, 1,381 patients with influenza from seven centres were included; 1,722 (61%) of the patients with COVID-19 and 666 (48%) of the patients with influenza were male (p < 0.001). The patients with COVID-19 were younger (median 67 years; interquartile range (IQR): 54–78) than the patients with influenza (median 74 years; IQR: 61–84) (p < 0.001). A larger percentage of patients with COVID-19 (12.8%) than patients with influenza (4.4%) died in hospital (p < 0.001). The final adjusted subdistribution hazard ratio for mortality was 3.01 (95% CI: 2.22–4.09; p < 0.001) for COVID-19 compared with influenza and 2.44 (95% CI: 2.00–3.00, p < 0.001) for ICU admission.
Conclusion
Community-acquired COVID-19 was associated with worse outcomes compared with community-acquired influenza, as the hazards of ICU admission and in-hospital death were about two-fold to three-fold higher.
full article
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2022.27.1.2001848#html_fulltext